We’ve talked here in the past about the growth of cloud adoption among enterprises and how it is enabling new and exciting work to be done by companies across the globe. At the same time, one of the other major technology trends of the past few years is the rise of capturing and analyzing big data as a way to better understand and improve your business operations.
For the most part, research has shown that companies have been keeping that data and running that analysis on premise at their facilities. However, as these two macro trends converge, there are signs that this is starting to change.
Recently, research firm Wikibon said in a big data market forecast report that it sees the “big data center of gravity shifting to the cloud.” Its findings were detailed in an EnterpriseTech article that described the change as due to “more enterprises mov[ing] to the cloud and the adoption of big data tools mov[ing] up the corporate ladder from IT operators and data scientists to the corner office.”
The article goes on to say: “For now, most big data production workloads are hosted on-premises, but Wikibon foresees the big data center of gravity shifting to the cloud as more enterprises deploy cloud infrastructure or embrace hybrid cloud options as a way to leverage cloud technology while securing sensitive or proprietary in-house [data].”
“Big data is heavy, and a central tenet of big data is to bring the compute to the data rather than the data to the compute. The cloud offers the added benefit of abstracting away significant layers of complexity associated with internally-hosted big data deployments.”
It only makes sense that as cloud infrastructure is adopted and the cloud becomes the preferred means of running a business that big data and analytics would move to the cloud as well. The cloud has proven to be just as, if not more, secure than on premise; it is easier to manage, making it easy to add or subtract users and eliminating the need for companies to worry about the upgrade cycle; it enables employees to work from anywhere – something today’s new employees expect, anyway; and it lowers the overall costs of a company’s infrastructure.
The cloud offers companies the ability to infinitely expand the amount of data it is pulling in and analyzing. As the company grows and expands with success, so to can its cloud.
What does that mean for you? Well it means if you’re currently not collecting and analyzing business data – then you should be (and you probably will be soon). If you’re not storing and analyzing that data in the cloud, then you soon will be. That makes it increasingly more important that you are certain your cloud provider has the capabilities needed to help you succeed.
Remember to look for these five areas when choosing a cloud partner that can handle your current or future big data needs:
Scalability – Can your data center grow with you? If you suddenly add ten times the data, does it have the facilities, technology, staff and space to let you expand? Never buy space you don’t need – but make sure it’s there for when you do.
Reliability – What is the uptime record of your potential new partner? What is their disaster plan?
Operations — How efficient is the potential cloud partner? How are they utilizing the space and energy needs of their customers?
Security – What steps are they taking to protect your critical data and information? Have they had problems in the past?
Upgrades – Do they have a record of continually upgrading and taking advantage of the latest technologies?
To learn more about how Markley Group’s strong, scalable, reliable and secure cloud computing solutions can help your business handle its big data and analytics needs, call 617-451-6464 or email us at info@markleygroup.com.
