In the latest Gigaom Research report “Unifying petabyte-scale unstructured data: enhancing enterprise data value”, John Webster of Gigaom Research, examines a data centric approach to storage and uncovers what forward-thinking organizations need to consider to address the problems created by accelerated data growth and the proliferation of data silos.

The connection between the creation of data silos and the information silos that result has yet to be made at the application level. Application developers and managers are well-aware of information silos but have tried to integrate them with middleware, adding additional expense and complexity to the application environment. Now there is an alternative to middleware that can be implemented at the data layer as opposed to the application layer. Implementing a contiguous, enterprise-wide data storage architecture can be used to break down the barriers and relieve applications of this burden. This emerging data centric approach called, Data Defined Storage, focuses on the content and value of data verses the size, type and location of data.

A data centric approach can be a powerful tool to help to remove silos in order to enable organizations to understand the true value of data, achieve strong management sustainability in an accelerating data data-growth environment, consistently enforce data governance policies and processes, search and retrieve data across the data estate, harness all data for big data analytics and to position the enterprise to respond quickly to new business opportunities.

Stored data within the data center now averages 40 to 60 percent on a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) basis. Acceleration will be driven by the growth of unstructured data – file, graphics, video, email, SharePoint, and social streams, the addition of cloud services and new applications that leverage personal portable devices, the growth of big data analytics applications and also the use of machine data for management and communications.

This creates data storage capacity challenges, and for these reasons progressive IT organizations are now examining their enterprise data environments with the objective of creating a foundational data layer that is accessed and shared not only by the enterprise’s more traditional business applications but also by a new generation of mobile and data analytics-driven applications going forward. The storage environment has traditionally been overlooked as a solution, probably because those who manage applications and other levels of infrastructure aren’t aware of PB-scale storage systems and the services now offered by them. However, because storage is foundational to the data environment, the most efficient place for the enterprise data layer is at the enterprise storage infrastructure level.

This allows the data, its usage and business value to define the enterprise storage environment and exposes data locked into silos to multiple business applications and analytics processes without adding cost, complexity and risk.

This data centric strategy enables unity and balance between maintaining current business processes and IT applications while providing the flexibility to develop new ones when the opportunity arises. Additionally, this approach is fostering an enterprise-wide acknowledgement of the value of data so business user groups can see the value in sharing information.

To read the full report, visit http://Tarm.in/Gigaom