Tag Archives: information management

And great AI starts with good Data Management

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

Processing data has become more expensive.

Somewhere, there is a misconception that data processing is cheap. That stems from the well-known pricings of the capacities of public cloud storage that are a fraction of cents per month. But data in storage has to be worked upon, and has to be built up and protected to increase its value. Data has to be processed, moved, shared, and used by applications. Data induce workloads. Nobody keeps data stored forever and never be used again. Nobody buys storage just for capacity alone.

We have a great saying in the industry. No matter, where the data moves, it will land in a storage. So, it is clear that data does not exist in ether. And yet, I often see how little attention and prudence and care, when it comes to data infrastructure and data management technologies, the very components that are foundational to great data.

Great data management for Great AI

AI is driving up costs in data processing

A few recent articles drew my focus into the cost of data processing.

Here is one posted by a friend on Facebook. It is titled “The world is running out of data to feed AI, experts warn.”

My first reaction was, “How can we run out of data“? We have so much data in the world today that the 175 zettabytes predicted by IDC when we reach 2025 might be grossly inaccurate. According to Exploding Topics, it is estimated that we create 328.77TB of data per day, 120 zettabytes per year. While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the numbers, the numbers are humongous.

Continue reading →

A Data Management culture to combat Ransomware

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment

On the road, seat belt saves lives. So does the motorcycle helmet. But these 2 technologies alone are probably not well received and well applied daily unless there is a strong ecosystem and culture about road safety. For decades, there have been constant and unrelenting efforts to enforce the habits of putting on the seat belt or the helmet. Statistics have shown they reduce road fatalities, but like I said, it is the safety culture that made all this happen.

On the digital front, the ransomware threats are unabated. In fact, despite organizations (and individuals), both large and small, being more aware of cyber-hygiene practices more than ever, the magnitude of ransomware attacks has multiplied. Threat actors still see weaknesses and gaps, and vulnerabilities in the digital realms, and thus, these are lucrative ventures that compliment the endeavours.

Time to look at Data Management

The Cost-Benefits-Risks Conundrum of Data Management

And I have said this before in the past. At a recent speaking engagement, I brought it up again. I said that ransomware is not a cybersecurity problem. Ransomware is a data management problem. I got blank stares from the crowd.

I get it. It is hard to convince people and companies to embrace a better data management culture. I think about the Cost-Benefits-Risk triangle while I was analyzing the lack of data management culture used in many organizations when combating ransomware.

I get it that Cybersecurity is big business. Even many of the storage guys I know wanted to jump into the cybersecurity bandwagon. Many of the data protection vendors are already mashing their solutions with a cybersecurity twist. That is where the opportunities are, and where the cool kids hang out. I get it.

Cybersecurity technologies are more tangible than data management. I get it when the C-suites like to show off shiny new cybersecurity “toys” because they are allowed to brag. Oh, my company has just implemented security brand XXX, and it’s so cool! They can’t be telling their golf buddies that they have a new data management culture, can they? What’s that?

Continue reading →

SSOT of Files

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

[ This is part two of “Where are your files living now?”. You can read Part One here ]

“Data locality, Data mobility“. It was a term I like to use a lot when describing about data consolidation, leading to my mention about files and folders, and where they live in my previous blog. The thinking of where the files and folders are now as in everywhere as they can be in a plethora of premises stretches the premise of SSOT (Single Source of Truth). And this expatriation of files with minimal checks and balances disturbs me.

A year ago, just before I joined iXsystems, I was given Google® embargoed news, probably a week before they announced BigQuery Omni. Then I was interviewed by Enterprise IT News, a local Malaysian technology news portal to provide an opinion quote. This was what I quoted:

“’The data warehouse in the cloud’ managed services of Big Query is underpinned by Google® Anthos, its hybrid cloud infra and service management platform based on GKE (Google® Kubernetes Engine). The containerised applications, both on-prem and in the multi-clouds, would allow Anthos to secure and orchestrate infra, services and policy management under one roof.”

I further quoted ” The data repositories remain in each cloud is good to address data sovereignty, data security concerns but it did not mention how it addresses “single source of truth” across multi-clouds.”

Single Source of Truth – regardless of repositories

Continue reading →