Building value through data infrastructure

The amount of digital data produced every day is surging. By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes (ZB), with the majority of enterprise data stored in the data centre¹. And as much as 30% of this data will be generated and consumed in real-time, driven by billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Modern businesses today are awash in data, fuelled by digitisation and the pervasiveness use of digital technologies. Most consumers already interact with businesses across multiple digital touch points such as smartphones and websites – and expect enterprises to utilise this digital treasure trove to deliver superior customer experiences.

On this front, organisations can analyse data to gain significantly deeper insights into fluid market conditions to pull ahead of the competition. An intimate understanding of trends and customer needs obtained through data analytics can culminate not only in cost savings but is also essential to the creation of new products and services.

Used correctly, there is no question that data is the new black gold. Before they can be leveraged, however, data must first be captured and stored. This is where things can get tricky. Data can take the form of structured data that is stored within traditional databases, or unstructured data that is harder to analyse – though no less important. Depending on its quantity, it may also be necessary to organise captured data within a data warehouse for big data analyses or machine learning initiatives.

It should be no surprise that businesses are seeking to centralise data storage and better manage data in order to realise its full potential. But with an estimated 42ZB² of data storage capacity to be shipped over the next seven years, the old data storage strategies are unlikely to work. For a start, IT infrastructure and data centre deployments must first be established to cope with the influx of data.

Traditional approaches entail storing data on dedicated appliances such as storage area networks (SAN). Such systems still have its use, though the surging growth of data calls for solutions that is more readily scalable. For enterprises looking to start from scratch, the logical approach is a private cloud deployment backed with cutting-edge converged infrastructure or hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) hardware.

By melding storage, compute and networking, enterprises can take their minds off the mundane technicalities of scaling and integrating their systems, focusing instead on gleaning the maximum value from their data. Of course, such systems typically require modern data centres that can support high-density systems with the cooling capacity to match. The latter is essential to keep pace with rapid growth as new HCI systems and networking servers are added.

Coupled with access to software-defined networking (SDN) powered connectivity options, enterprises can change the economics of storage by better aligning their capacity to match actual data centre traffic patterns. This future-ready data centre deployment can hence serve as an anchor to support the enterprise push towards a data-driven future.

Already, Singapore-based Grab is tapping into millions of rows of data about its users to personalise its ride-sharing app to individual users³. AirAsia is also relying heavily on data to create a "frictionless" travel experience by installing IoT sensors on its planes for predictive maintenance and tapping into customer data to offer a personalised experience.

Ultimately, data represents an opportunity to discover new insights and help organisations to innovate and increase their agility, whether in marketing, manufacturing or in verticals such as retail or in FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). Expect the rapid rise of techniques in manipulating data such as predictive data analytics, fraud detection, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine learning to turn hard numbers into insights.

By partnering with the right colocation facility to build their data infrastructure, enterprises can rest assured that they are ready for the future.

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¹ https://www.seagate.com/our-story/data-age-2025/

² The Digitization of the World From Edge to Core, Data Age 2025 Report, November 2018

³ https://www.zdnet.com/article/grab-rides-on-data-in-bid-to-offer-sea-consumers-hyper-personal-app/