A known name in the world of enterprise storage, Hitachi
Data Systems has laid out a comprehensive strategy to take advantage of
opportunities related to Big Data analytics
Recently, Hitachi Data Systems
aligned its product and solutions portfolio around a three-tiered strategy
focused on the cloud. This consists of infrastructure cloud, content cloud and
information cloud that Hitachi says will build on existing IT investments to
provide a single virtualization platform for all data.
While the infrastructure cloud
will help enterprises unify server, storage and networking silos, the content
cloud will use intelligent tools to enable data indexing, search and discovery
across data types. The third component, called the information cloud, has the
capability to connect data sets, reveal patterns across them and bring to
surface actionable information and new insights to business users.
The information cloud has been
launched at a time, when organizations are finding it exceedingly difficult to
handle vast amounts of data. For example, a recent survey conducted by Hitachi
Data Systems in association with market analyst firm, IDC revealed that about
70 percent of respondents in India believed that the demand of the business for
deeper analysis outpaces the ability for their systems to ensure the data they
have is relevant, timely and useful. In other words, their data growth is
outpacing their ability to effectively manage it.
Making sense of unstructured data
A major contributor to this
heady growth of storage is related to unstructured data, which can come in the
form of e-mails, videos or medical records. “The biggest challenge is
undoubtedly unstructured data, which is growing at 10 times the rate at which
traditional data is growing. The competitiveness of organizations will be
determined by how will they govern, manage and leverage this data for taking
decisions,” says Kevin Eggleston, Senior Vice President and GM, Hitachi Data
Systems Asia-Pacific.
Eggleston says that the biggest
advantage that Hitachi has today is that it can help customers get business
insights from their data, even if it is stored across different data systems
from different vendors. For example, using the content cloud, content can be
stored independently from the application that created it. The lifespan of some
data can be 30 years or more, while the applications that created the data may
only exist for a few years. Hence, it is critical to free the data from the
underlying application. Once freed, the data can be further analyzed to reveal
intelligent insights.
A case in point is Klinikum
Wels-Grieskirchen, one of the largest hospitals in Austria. The hospital is
using the content cloud to consolidate patient information for its lab,
radiology and unstructured content management systems, and associated metadata,
to provide a consolidated view to its National eHealth application and the
hospital's own clinician portal.
“You cannot deliver insights
from Big Data unless you look at all the sources of information. With
information cloud, we are talking about a system that looks more like a global
file system, and customers could seek intelligent insights by combining
information from different data sources on the fly,” says Eggleston.
While Hitachi is not a traditional
analytics player, it believes that it is not far behind other traditional
players, as analytics is still not defined or mature with respect to
unstructured data. As Hitachi used object-based storage, it has the capability
to not only store unstructured data, but also the associated metadata, that
describes the object. Objects can be in the form of CT scans or video
surveillance recordings.
“By analyzing unstructured data
such as CT scans or video surveillance recordings in the cloud, we can decipher
several interesting insights. For example, by comparing and analyzing thousands
of video surveillance recordings or CT scans, we can draw business value and
find patterns, which previously could not be identified,” explains Eggleston.
Hitachi believes it has an edge in this area, as it can leverage the domain
expertise of its parent group, which has presence across different sectors such
as energy, healthcare, urban transportation and utility.
Hitachi Data Systems is already
on a fast growth track in India. The Asia-Pacific region happens to be the
fastest growing region for Hitachi Data Systems, and India leads the growth in
the region. With the three-tier strategy, Hitachi is well positioned to reap
the benefits of a converged play, and sustain the momentum.
InformationWeek
Business & Investment Opportunities
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