Seven Ways to Make Big Data an Actionable Opportunity
Many of the Big Data management issues that enterprise IT organizations are now facing have been previously tackled in high-performance computing (HPC) environments. For example, SGI has been providing a Big Data storage system optimized for HPC environments for the better part of 20 years.
SGI is now extending that capability with the acquisition of FileTek, a provider of data lifecycle management software and a complementary set of analytics tools that identifies what data is being used most often across a range of heterogeneous file storage systems.
According to Bruce Elder, general manager for storage at SGI, FileTek provides an active archiving capability that ensures that hot data stays accessible on primary storage, while warmer data that is likely to be accessed stays available on the most appropriate magnetic storage device.
As applications for managing tiers of data, Elder says StorHouse and Trusted Edge software from Filetek have been widely used for years in HPC environments to manage Big Data. As more enterprise IT organizations now find themselves wrestling with similar Big Data issues, Elder says SGI sees an opportunity to expand its presence beyond its traditional base of HPC customers.
According to Elder, the SGI storage systems have historically handled Big Data applications, while better known enterprise storage vendors are just now getting around to adding Big Data capabilities.
As Big Data becomes more prevalent in the enterprise, it’s clear that many of the issues that HPC environments have dealt with for years will be the same challenges that traditional enterprise IT organizations are about to face. Whether enterprise IT organizations opt to stay with their existing vendors or will consider new options is anybody’s guess. But considering that HPC environments have already dealt with the issues of managing Big Data, traditional enterprise IT organizations should probably look to this arena for solutions.
