Intelligent Data Tiering: Fall in Love With Your Data, Again

"The best-run companies are data-driven, and this skill sets businesses apart from their competition." 

– Tomasz Tunguz, Venture Capitalist, Redpoint

We are in the age of analytics for everything. Global revenue for big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions reached $189.1B in 2019. Ninety percent of enterprise professionals say that data and analytics will be key to their organization's digital transformation initiatives by the end of 2020. Companies of all sizes love that data of "such complexity that a human mind struggles to comprehend" can drive opportunity and inform vital business decisions.

Companies love data because data can help: 

• Anticipate supply and demand.
• Determine target audience and consumer preferences.
• Source and retain customers.
• Improve processes.
• Assess marketing efforts and social media engagement.
• Predict sales trends.
• Flag potential issues.
• Monitor employee well-being.

This list is just a small sample of the insights data and analytics can provide. Data is the magic ingredient in almost every modern recipe for business success. Even verticals that have historically made primarily "subjective people-related decisions" — like human resources and arts — now rely on data and algorithms to gain a competitive edge.

The cost of data consumption

"Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine. Pursuing this strategically will create an unprecedented amount of information of enormous variety and complexity," states a Gartner report.

But there is a downside to data consumption as well.

Unstructured data is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of between 55 and 65 percent.  For many businesses, this is far too much data with too much churn to manage cost-effectively. Many organizations' hot and cold data are being stored, replicated and backed-up exactly where users put it — on Tier 1 storage. 

Typically, 60 percent of an organization's data is cold and has not been accessed in over a year. Storing cold data on Tier 1 storage is not only expensive but can bottleneck performance. CIOs can significantly reduce data storage costs and increase performance by implementing intelligent data management solutions that take the guesswork out of where to store their data.

IDC says that "digital transformation is a key driver of BDA spending, with executive-level initiatives resulting in deep assessments of current business practices and demands for better, faster, and more comprehensive access to data and related analytics and insights." IDC continues: "enterprises are rearchitecting to meet these demands and investing in modern technology that will enable them to innovate and remain competitive. BDA solutions are at the heart of many of these investments."

Use intelligent tiered storage to keep the data romance alive  

Tiered storage is the strategic management of data across performance tiers to improve efficiency, reduce costs and automate file management. Delivering data protection and tiered management for the Microsoft Azure Cloud requires a modern approach to accommodate the shift to service consumption, automation of service delivery and development of modular, scale-out applications.

Too many organizations rush to fulfill a cloud mandate and end up placing an innovative technology platform on top of a flawed foundation. A weak foundation inevitably leads to disappointing results and diminished ROI.

Rubrik's Intelligent Data Tiering helps customers optimize Microsoft Azure storage consumption and builds a strong foundation for digital transformation.

Intelligent data storage tiering can:

• Drive down consumption costs by keeping active data easily available while still retaining older, less frequently accessed data.
• Minimize management with smart automation that allows IT administrators to tackle never-ending mountains of data with assurance that their solution is scalable and reliable.
• Fortify data security, recovery and resiliency through real-time platform insights on data management, compliance and capacity planning across a cloud environment.

The intelligence and logic that is built into Rubrik's Instant Tiering and Smart Tiering technologies will help solve common problems and provide cost savings in the public cloud. Smart Tiering is the best option for a complete, automated data lifecycle solution, and Instant Tiering allows for getting a snapshot to the Archive tier for long-term retention. Rubrik makes moving and tiering snapshots to Azure simple and efficient while also giving you more control over your cloud storage consumption and costs. It's smart data management.

To learn more about Rubrik's Instant Tiering and Smart Tiering — and how to optimize Microsoft Azure storage — download this infographic.