The Future of Cloud Computing and Big Data - What do Businesses Need to do to Prepare?
However, the honeymoon period for digital data was short lived, with companies soon finding that they were being charged with storing, cataloguing and analysing an ever-increasing sea of information which can easily outgrow the capabilities of an in-house IT setup.
Global predictions for the growth of data make interesting reading. A report from CSC found that while the total amount of digital information in the world was 1.2 zettabytes (ZB) in 2010, by 2020 this will have risen to 35ZB. Since a zettabyte is the equivalent of a thousand billion gigabytes, this is not an insignificant amount of information. And the rate at which data is being produced by 2020 will be 44 times that of the levels registered in 2009, so the market will still be growing, not slowing.
While two thirds of the data generated by the end of the decade will come from individuals, businesses will still be responsible for creating the rest and the majority of this information in all of its forms will need to be stored and managed by enterprises. Ten years on from 2020 and the problem will have become exponentially bigger, at least if you consider the growth in data creation as an issue in itself that requires a solution rather than an opportunity for businesses to innovate and improve themselves.
Big data services based in the cloud are designed to answer the ever-growing requirements placed upon IT infrastructures by businesses.
While relying on in-house hardware can leave a company struggling to find adequate storage and processing capacity for information, a big data platform is purposefully designed to be flexible enough to handle data of all types and scalable enough to grow in line with the needs of its clients. The cloud's role in managing the global flow of data is expected to increase as demand for storage grows, with the CSC report predicting that by 2020 a little over a third of all information produced will be kept in the cloud.
With all that being said, businesses will doubtlessly be wondering whether there is anything they can do to prepare for this data-drenched future in which the cloud is going to be playing an increasingly central role. For a company that may still be entirely reliant on internal systems for data storage, or has yet to computerise all of their old records, these estimations can make intimidating reading.
However, it is important for companies to embrace the cloud rather than shy away from adoption, because experts predict that it will not only become ubiquitous in the future, but will be so well integrated that users will not even make the distinction between hosted and on-site services.Conversely, firms which hesitate and are needlessly sceptical about the cloud may find that they are forced to rush into adoption in the future at a pace which may not be entirely suitable. It is better to get ready for the cloud right now rather than wait until there is no other choice available.
Hardware and software upgrades are handled by cloud providers centrally, which removes this responsibility from the hands of businesses and thus lowers the costs associated with procurement, maintenance and augmentations.
As your data requirement spiral ever upwards, the cloud will be growing at a rate that never leaves you feeling restricted. It is in the interest of cloud providers to constantly invest in their underlying infrastructures to meet the expectations of clients and with more organisations and individuals investing in the cloud there is always funding available to help them achieve this.
The fact that the cloud will still only account for a third of all data storage by 2020 suggests that there is still room for businesses to keep data independent of remote systems. Of course companies which choose to use the cloud for the purposes of data backup and security while still using internal hardware for day to day activities may account for this.
Preparing to hold back the floodwaters of data does not mean that your business has to invest in a huge dam. Instead the cloud can become the scenic, remote reservoir that lets you accommodate the coming torrent with ease.