Exponential Data Growth and What it Means For Business

"Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit." William Pollard

With the exponential growth of data collection and data storage, we are experiencing the same dilemma. The phenomenal growth of data continues to thwart the growth of storage; IT budgets are increasing at a 60% rate of expansion according to Dave Reinsel, program director, at Storage Research. As businesses, leaders, and entrepreneurs we are all collecting and storing a lot of data. Some information is stored for ease of work, so that people can access work anytime and from anywhere. Some data like email is stored for legal reasons. Some data storage is for accessibility of use, as in databases with customer contact information. We also store contracts, policies, and procedures online, in the name of saving trees. When in reality the energy used to store data can be the real issue in question.

What does this mean for the businesses?

Many see the growth as being out of control. Rethinking what is important and how to package that information is causing many organizations, to consider other ways of doing business. Policies and procedures are being thought through, by people who never considered the implications of prior decisions. Will any of the new solutions have an impact on convenience? Will workers still be able to work from home, having access to what they will need to be productive?

The real impact to business could be enormous in both costs and effectiveness of running a business. Setting a priority is something that should be looked at now in preparation for the future. Making time-lines for acquisitions of equipment, budgeting for projects, and reallocation of existing capacity are issues that companies will need to address.

What does it mean for the environment?

More technology companies are talking about green solutions. More scalable way to transmit information is being created every day. The world has become smaller because of the many ways we are able to communicate with each other, but saving those resources have to start now. Data centers will be smaller, but capable of managing more because of the dynamic infrastructures that will be in place.

What does this mean for the consumer?

For the everyday consumer, they probably will benefit from better service. As companies increase their understanding of issues facing them the solutions will be readily available to the common consumer of usage. It will be something like the solutions offered the regular users of the basic email services available online. What is now taken for granted was paid services in the past. (i.e. email capacity, calendars, and ease of use)

Some added costs will be incurred when ISP companies start differentiating packages to the public based on consumer usage. Not having an understanding of the implications may initially cause poor service or perceived poor service when consumers opt for the cheaper packages, not understanding when they have their homes networked and everyone is using the computers that services will be slow and laborious.

What does it do to how business is done?

There is some good news coming from the studies. In looking at ways to control cost of storage growths in large scale environments studies have been commissioned by the industry to help them see the big picture. Mike Karp, EMA senior Analyst shared his data on customer experiences following data software replacements; 1) reductions will be seen in administrative overhead, when looking at troubleshooting, 2) reductions in protection failure rates from 30% down to 5%, 3)reductions in time to restore data.

Companies are going to have to start looking at data growth issues now. They are going to have to ask some serious questions about their data management and data storage initiatives, the customers they serve, and the real needs of how they want to do business. Going back to William Pollard's quote, if the information is not used to help find solutions to the dilemma it is useless. Data growth is a problem and it is going to take everyone to help find a solution that can allow us to continue to move forward.