Adopting a hybrid approach to data management

Data is fundamental to digital life and, as a result, we have entered the zettabyte era with huge volumes of data created every year. In fact, as per projections1, by 2025, global data creation is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.  No wonder then that the global data center market is growing so rapidly. India is witnessing a similar trend and India’s data center capacity is expected to double, reaching over 1,700-1,800 megawatts (MW) by fiscal 2025, up from ~870 MW in 2021.  

To accommodate this expansion enterprises are rethinking their data strategy to deal with ever-growing data demands. Today, enterprises are considering co-location data centers and public cloud-based data center providers.  

Cloud or on-premises

IT decision-makers are faced with a crucial decision regarding which elements of their business data should be on the cloud, and what needs to be retained on-premises. With surging data demands, CIOs continue to look for means to outsource data storage and management to cloud service providers. However, they may also need to consider an organization’s proprietary data which may need to be stored on-premises. 

As a result, a hybrid approach to data management is gaining popularity among CIOs, enabling them to divide their data storage between cloud service providers and in-house data centers. This hybrid model is especially sought after by organizations that want options to protect and control their intellectual property or proprietary software and want to retain such data in their complete control. Cloud service providers of course do also offer advanced security, and scalability to an enterprise.  

Nevertheless, whichever model an enterprise chooses, it must be efficient for storing and accessing huge volumes of data, while offering cost efficiencies and low TCO at scale. Western Digital has introduced the world’s first 22TB5 CMR HDD, the Ultrastar® DC HC570. This industry-leading drive delivers customer value by driving lower TCO while meeting cloud providers’ and hyperscale customers’ modern data demands. What’s more, Western Digital’s  Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 JBODs feature the new 22TB CMR Ultrastar HDDs, delivering the industry’s highest storage density in a fully optimized platform for added durability and data reliability for software-defined storage.   

Storage needs for fast data are different  

Beyond deciding where data is stored, there are also considerations for how the data is retained. The widespread use of applications that depend on technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet--of things (IoT), has changed the storage dynamics.  

These applications need storage that offers fast responsiveness and the ability to retrieve data immediately. For such workloads, solid state drives (SSDs) powered with NVME are the best choice. SSDs improve system responsiveness and boost productivity while lowering overall TCO, as these come in a massive capacity of up to 15.36TB. These SSDs are specially designed for applications that require low latency and high availability of data.  

Future-proofing data infrastructure is the most important step toward becoming a data-driven organization and unlocking the full potential of data. Enterprises are considering a holistic and organization-wide approach to bringing data to the center of the business strategy – whether the data is stored on-premises or in the cloud. It is important to revisit data strategy from time to time, and make adequate changes to it, as demanded by different use cases. Enterprises need to put data at the heart of their strategic vision and business activity irrespective of where it lives.

Jaganathan Chelliah

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Jaganathan Chelliah is the Senior Director, Marketing, India, Middle East & TIA at Western Digital.