HGST unlocks valuable data with storage

Storage has enabled the world to realise the value of data, according to enterprise storage firm HGST.

In a survey by the Western Digital-owned company, 86 percent of CIOs and IT decision makers agreed that data has value if it can be stored, accessed, and analysed.

Speaking to ZDNet, David Chua, HGST Asia Pacific South director of distribution business, said the relationship between businesses and data has always existed, but the importance of it has now been heightened as more businesses realise the benefits of valuable data.

"You realise that data is the currency of the new economy. Data touches us virtually every aspect of our lives. In our data-centric world, it becomes essential for us to harness the power of raw data, and data helps us make better and more accurate decisions. It also helps us adapt to changes, and also allow us to predict the future," he said.

"The place where we harness the power of data is in the datacentre and we continue to find more ways to use and extract the value from it. In order for us to that is to transform the datacentre, and the transformation will help store, access, and protect and grow the amount of data being generated."

However, 48 percent of respondents to the survey are not storing all available data, with 78 percent saying that if they had better analytic tools and storage solutions, it would improve their business efficiency, and 25 percent admitting their organisation does not have the right mix of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data storage to analyse what they have.

"To extract value from raw data, it needs to be transformed," said Chua.

"Organisations want tools and applications to help them accomplish that in the world of exponential growth. The infrastructure provided needs to make the quantum leap in three aspects of efficiency, accessibility, as well as longevity.

"But the way we store it and transform is also changing. Three underlying themes are driving that: Performance demanded by applications, massive growth in data, and phenomenon in the cloud."

Meanwhile, as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more prominent, the amount of data will grow exponentially. Kheng Bin Ng, HGST Asia-Pacific product manager of cloud storage and enterprise products, said data is growing at a comparable growth of 40 percent every year, and by 2020, valuable data will grow to 37 percent.

"In the past, people stored data passively through archives, but data is becoming more available with the invention of big data analytics and also the Internet of Things," he said.

"The Internet of Things is basically all the devices, including our smartphone, laptop, tablets, cameras, wearables, and all of these are feeding a lot of real-time data to help analytics to make decisions in real time.

"A good example is the Boston Bombing case, where they could nail the suspect within a few days; such an act could never have been done in the past. But because of big data and the IoT, data is becoming and more and more valuable. If we were to store valuable data at the start, you need to store more raw data, and to store raw data you need to look at bigger, bigger capacity."

In turn, 63 percent of IT decision makers surveyed are investing in solid-state drives to accelerate or extend the life of their hardware investments. Additionally, 61 percent said they plan on engaging in a total cost ownership-related project.

Data accessibility on the cloud is also growing. Currently, only 7 percent of respondents keep more than 50 percent of their data in the cloud; however, 30 percent expect to keep at least 50 percent of their data in the cloud a year from now.

"As the industry transforms into the third platform of computing, the demand for cloud datacentres is becoming a main area of focus for innovation, as well as transformation. With that, it brings a new wave of opportunities," Chua said.

Most recently, HGST released a new family of PCIe flash-storage cards for boosting performance of data-intensive applications. The company has also delivered a helium-filled drive to market.