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Big Data: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

For decades, businesses worked hard to accumulate customer information that would help drive their business. The task was demanding, but those insights felt meaningful and earned. Fast forward to the current digital age, where customer data is no longer sacred. In fact, it is so readily available that it’s daunting to even process. The task now shifts from “How do we get the data” to “What is important?” and “Where do we put it all?”.
Managed correctly, big data can be the gift that keeps on giving. But without a proper roadmap, big data can mean big problems. And the best storage method is unique to each business. How can you know what will work best for your business?
First, let’s take a step back and talk about what big data is. “Big data” refers to the huge volume of structured and unstructured data collected by businesses each day. All of this information is gathered through everything from cell phones and wearable devices to internet usage to medical equipment and vehicles. Much of this is important to analytics that can be the lifeblood of a business.
Each year, the amount of data grows exponentially. In fact, the size of the digital universe will double every two years at least, a 50-fold growth from 2010 to 2020, according to insidebigdata.com. Conventional methods of data storage cannot keep up with that sort of growth. So, what is a company to do? More and more, incorporating cloud storage into your big data management strategy has shifted from a luxury to a necessity.

Hybrid Cloud is the Silver Lining

Thankfully, just as big data continues to grow and evolve, so does cloud technology. We’re seeing far fewer cookie cutter solutions and more customization to meet the customer’s many needs. The best example of this is the proliferation of hybrid cloud solutions.
A hybrid cloud solution brings the benefits of public cloud storage together with the security aspects of a private cloud. For instance, LightEdge’s Hybrid Solution Center allows public and private cloud, colocation, security and compliance, edge computing and network configuration to all interact, creating a technology ecosystem that is efficient, agile and affordable. And therein lies the key: finding a provider that not only can offer your business these individual components, but who understands the data and can help architect a solution that integrates all components of a technology ecosystem.
Another key consideration with big data is the amount of bandwidth and the speed needed to keep everything interconnected with the continued emergence of internet of things (IoT). To wit, Gartner Group projects that by 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet, generating approximately 40 zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 1 billion terabytes; put simply, that’s a lot). To analyze all that important data in near real-time, it helps to be located near the “edge” of the network. In most cases, this edge is a central processing center such as a data center or IaaS cloud.
Edge-of-network storage for these massive data stores and associated applications is ideal because of their extremely high access and processing requirements. A good edge provider can offer resilient, secure, redundant, and hardened cloud and colocation solutions sitting just a few milliseconds away—with the advantages of local data control and 24/7 support from local experts, 365 days a year. Because, quite literally, every millisecond counts.
So the hybrid cloud solution provides the agility you need for the data and the edge computing provides the bandwidth and speed. At LightEdge, we offer both. What separates us from other edge providers is our ability to architect, orchestrate, and manage your hybrid cloud deployment. We manage the different on-ramps, access points, and interoperability of multi-cloud implementations to ensure that everything is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. We ensure each type of data is stored in the appropriate location and we act as a single point of contact, so our customers don’t have to worry about what to put in which type of storage.
It’s the perfect package, all wrapped up for you.
Big Data: the gift that keeps on giving

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