IT Infrastructure Insights

Key Storage Data Metrics Every IT Executive Needs to Watch in 2021

Dec 21, 2020

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Data can help enterprises make better decisions, solve problems, improve processes, and understand consumers, but data is also a challenge for IT leaders. Data growth is rapidly increasing, even as budgets are either static or decreasing. The combination of expansive data and constrictive budgets presents a hefty challenge to businesses and IT leaders. In order to avoid unnecessary and emergency storage purchases, it’s essential that IT leaders know their key storage data metrics to understand not only how quickly their storage is growing, but where that growth is happening. With the right tools, insight, and intelligence, IT leaders can uncover opportunities for operational efficiencies, cost savings, and infrastructure planning.

Understanding Data Growth

Enterprises recognize that data is rapidly becoming their most valuable asset. Already, many businesses rank the value of their data ahead of every other asset with the exception of their customers and employees. At the same time, IT leaders see data as one of the most challenging problems they face, due mainly to the fact that data growth at a majority of companies has become astronomical.

As companies find themselves challenged by both the amount of data streaming into their systems and the varieties of different types of data, a better understanding of their storage data metrics, including data growth, will be fundamental for IT leaders in 2021. It won’t be enough to just know that enterprise data is growing; IT leaders will also need to know where that growth is happening. Is it high-performance data that is growing? Or is it storage data that is growing? 

Not all data is created equally, and it’s important to find a solution that fits your data. Different types of data and different workloads will have unique characteristics that will demand something different from the storage system.

As your organization handles an ever-increasing amount of data, IT leaders are struggling with how to take advantage of all the data being generated by the business while still managing it in a way to ensure the greatest cost savings. The challenge facing IT leaders is that they often don’t have access to critical and reliable data regarding their storage needs. Too often, this data is either hidden within the silos of various systems, or inefficient and timely processes are yielding unreliable data or both. IT leaders need superior visibility into their data management across the enterprise, which is why Visual One empowers IT teams with data transparency and technology to support smart strategic decisions. 

Improved Infrastructure Planning

The first step to improving data storage performance is understanding data growth. The second step is making your data storage run better. Simply put, your data won’t be of much value to your organization if it’s hard to access. It’s important to create an infrastructure that focuses on improved data visibility and improved operations.

IT leaders face many challenges when it comes to managing and optimizing their storage environment. At the top of that list is the type of data needing to be stored. The bulk of the mounting data growth facing enterprises is unstructured, which poses a unique challenge for organizations, as traditional storage systems were not designed to cope with this type of data. Because managing unstructured data requires different approaches and capabilities than the traditional approaches to managing structured data, IT leaders are left grappling to make strategic infrastructure decisions without a transparent view of their data management across the enterprise.

With a wealth of data to store, it can quickly get out of hand. To meet the challenge, companies need the right IT infrastructure in place so that data can be retrieved and processed in a timely manner. While a typical capacity plan for a storage environment will take into account storage limits, something that is almost never considered is the performance limit.

Most businesses only project storage usage, but if they were to factor in performance capacity, they would likely see a completely different growth curve. Having greater insight into your storage environment can make the difference in being able to negotiate new storage purchases early and avoid making a more expensive, emergency, reactive purchase later on.

Having a visual data management solution that instantly delivers transparency across your storage environment allows IT leaders to identify the right storage space for each type of data, saving time, reducing costs, and improving efficiency.

When IT leaders are armed with efficient and reliable tools, they can plan ahead, track growth trends, and negotiate new storage purchases while avoiding unnecessary, reactive purchases. At Visual One, we believe that storage reporting should be simple, cost-effective, and actionable. Visual One equips IT leaders with superior visibility into their data management across the enterprise, helping them save time, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Schedule a demo to talk to a Visual One data expert.

Key Takeaways

  • Data growth is rapidly increasing, even as budgets are either staying the same or decreasing.
  • IT leaders must know their key storage data metrics to understand not only how quickly their storage is growing, but where that growth is happening.
  • It’s important to create an infrastructure system that focuses on improved data visibility, improved operations, and understanding data categorizations.
  • Visual One equips IT leaders with superior visibility into their data management across the enterprise, helping them save time, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.