Poised to bring billions of dollars in value to industries such as health care, big data is a trend that's here to stay. Big data straddles the IT and marketing sectors: Not only is it a technological problem — where to put all of this data? — it is poised to deliver real, actionable boardroom insights. While the big data trend has skyrocketed, many do not fully comprehend how to manage data. Despite this uncertainty, there is a growing consensus that big data is value. Organizations are beginning the infrastructure investment in systems that enable the large-scale storage and analysis of data.

The Proliferation of Big Data Through the Enterprise
Data sets too large to be effectively and fully captured, managed, stored and analyzed using traditional infrastructures are referred to as big data. Existing data storage systems are not equipped to analyze big data and are limiting the growth of big data, strained as they are. There is a critical need for new storage, networking and computing systems that can handle big data.

Data is poised to help businesses of all sizes and industries stay competitive by slashing costs, streamlining workflow and productivity, improve product quality and create new products or offer new services. A company that analyzes its customer data is better able to determine what customers use — and therefore what they need — than a company that is data-blind.

Why Big Data Needs Scalable Storage Solutions
Storage infrastructure investments will provide a platform from which meaningful information can be extracted from big data in an insightful manner. This will correlate directly to business value from data-driven insights on customer behavior, social media, sales figures and other metrics. As big data delivers a meaningful impact on enterprise growth and bottom line, more businesses will adopt big data and seek data storage solutions sized for big data. Traditional data storage solutions such as network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) fail to scale or deliver the required agility needed to process big data.

Cloud Storage for Big Data
It isn't just enough to buy more storage for big data: Data needs grow indefinitely, leading to greater storage needs. The scalable and agile nature of cloud technology makes it an ideal match for big data management. With cloud-based storage systems, data sets can be replicated, relocated and housed anywhere in the world. This simplifies the task of scaling infrastructure up or down by placing it on the cloud vendor. Block storage works particularly well for big data, as it is a forma-independent storage solution and one that allows researchers and analysts to access, analyze and manage data very quickly. Thanks to the cloud, businesses will not need to develop, house and maintain their own infrastructure, leading to cost reduction.

The question is not whether businesses will take advantage of big data, but when. The current data storage infrastructure is not adequate for big data management, and the cloud offers one easy, cost effective solution for handling, storing and managing big data. Many cloud vendors offer block or object storage options that are ideal for storing big data.

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