For organisations, data is their most valuable asset. It fuels innovation and helps power informed decisions. The amount of data an organisation holds has grown exponentially in recent years, this increase in the amount of data that needs to be stored brings new challenges to organisations in terms of capabilities, complexities and compliance.
As organisations collect more and more data they need intelligent data storage solutions that help accelerate business. Data needs to be always-on, always-fast, automated, protected and available on-demand for faster time to value and to free up IT resources.
There are a number of challenges that organisation face around the amount of data that needs to be stored in today’s data-intensive world such as data growth, infrastructure, scalability, data complexity, compliance and data protection.
Data Growth
The amount of data organisations now collect and store is significantly larger compared to ten years ago, and as businesses and consumers continue to embrace digital this growth will only continue. Storage solutions that work cleanly for small amounts of data will unlikely be able to meet the demands of processing and storing large volumes of data.
Many organisations are faced with the challenge of data entering their systems from a number of various sources and each piece of data needs to be stored in a specific way that makes it easier to be retrieved when it is needed.
Failing to store data in the correct way can become a costly and time-consuming headache for organisations that will trip them up further down the line and could even result in them losing their competitive edge.
Infrastructure
Not only do organisations need the right procedures for storing data they also need the right infrastructure. Legacy data storage solutions will likely fall over when trying to process and store the level of data that organisations need to store today. Organisations should consider investing in modern storage solutions.
Scalability
As your organisation grows and develops so will your data storage needs. A solution that may fit your needs now, may not offer the scalability you need to grow your data storage capabilities. Some legacy storage solutions may not cope with large amounts of data or getting additional capacity may take months and may not be cost-efficient.
Organisations must be confident that data is available, accessible, protected, and recoverable at all times. Every deployment includes a capacity buffer for any unexpected increases in demand to mitigate over-provisioning expense and under-provisioning risk.
Data Complexity
The majority of organisations are prepared and equipped to handle structured data, but with an estimated 80% of data that enters organisations being unstructured, this can add another layer of complexity to managing, maintaining and storing data.
Unstructured data is growing rapidly in the data centre, the edge and in the cloud, having a storage solution that can efficiently manage unstructured data is crucial to ensure that organisations are getting the most value out of it.
Data complexity also comes in the size and structure of data, typically large data is more complex than small data and data that is entangled with many relationships is more complex than data that has a simple structure.
Compliance & Data Protection
Organisations need to comply with a growing suite of data protection, privacy and industry-specific rules and regulations.
With the data breach threat landscape growing and becoming increasingly sophisticated combined with regulatory compliance such as GDPR, it is imperative that organisations have data storage solutions that ensures the data they hold is secure, protected from a security breach and that the way they use data is compliant.
Next Steps
Managing the ever-growing volume of data is a significant challenge for businesses today. From storage capacity to data protection and accessibility, there are numerous hurdles to overcome. Fortunately, MTI’s Data Centre Services offer comprehensive solutions to address these challenges head-on. Whether you need scalable storage solutions, robust data protection strategies, or optimised data accessibility, MTI has the expertise and experience to help. Contact us today to learn more about how our data centre services can empower your business to effectively manage and leverage its data assets.