Uncontrolled data growth continues to be one of the significant challenges of an increasingly digitalized world. Massive amounts of data are now being created, processed and stored everywhere — from on-premises data centers to the network edge and the cloud. In the 2021 edition of its annual DataSphere report, IDC says the amount of digital data created over the next five years will be more than double the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage.
Managing all this data is becoming extremely problematic. Most organizations find that no single infrastructure can address all their requirements, so they often wind up with large data volumes housed in disparate systems and platforms. According to a survey by NTT Data Services, 79 percent of organizations say data silos hamper their business.
Here are three ways data silos create operational issues:
- Poor consistency. Disparate storage systems tend to format data differently, making it difficult to consistently deliver relevant information to business users. It requires data harmonization to convert data with different formats, naming conventions and columns into one cohesive data set. That takes time and prevents decision-making based on real-time data.
- Reduced accuracy. When different departments store the same information in different databases, it can lead to inconsistencies. As data is manipulated, updated and changed over time, it can become difficult to ascertain which version is most accurate. That hampers collaboration by making it nearly impossible to share data.
- Wasted resources. Disparate systems force companies to spend more money, time and resources on storage. Storage space is wasted when different departments store different versions of the same database in different systems. The process of cleansing, deduplicating and harmonizing data also wastes time and money.
Eliminating Silos
Dell EMC’s PowerStore family of all-flash data storage appliances can help eliminate data silos with a unique architecture that helps organizations simplify and consolidate their storage infrastructure. With a single architecture for block, file and virtual volumes, PowerStore can handle any workload — relational databases, enterprise resource planning, cloud-native applications, content repositories, container-based apps and more.
Administrators can choose to deploy the PowerStoreOS in a bare-metal configuration on PowerStore hardware, or within a virtual machine (VM) running on PowerStore’s optional built-in VMware hypervisor. This compact footprint and adaptable design make it ideal not only for on-premises applications, but for multi-cloud access, edge-based data analytics and remote office applications.
Cloud and Edge Storage
Multi-Cloud Data Services for Dell EMC storage allows PowerStore to connect directly to public clouds, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud. This feature allows customers to integrate on-premises infrastructure with public and hybrid cloud resources while maintaining management and operational consistency. That is an increasingly critical capability at a time when more than 90 percent of companies are deploying workloads across multiple clouds.
Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 75 percent of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed at the edge. PowerStore’s unique architecture is ideal for data-intensive workloads at edge locations that require a compact, simple infrastructure. When the PowerStore OS is running on a VM, administrators can use the AppsON feature to run edge management and analytics applications directly on the appliance, using the same VMware tools and methods they use with external hosts.
Rapid data growth is contributing to data silos and storage management issues in most organizations. Dell EMC’s PowerStore appliances help address those challenges through a single architecture designed to handle all workloads across data center, cloud and edge environments. Contact us to learn more about using PowerStore to resolve your storage issues.
