The Big Picture



The world’s ‘digital universe’ will grow to 8 ZB by 2015. While this figure is very daunting, the bigger challenge is the different data forms and formats within that 8 ZB data. IDC predicts that by 2015, over 90 percent of that data will be unstructured. Just think, every 60 seconds, the world generates massive amounts of unstructured data:
§ Add a note here98,000+ tweets.
§ Add a note here695,000 Facebook status updates.
§ Add a note here11,000,000,000 instant messages.
§ Add a note here168,000,000,000+ emails sent.
§ Add a note here1,820,000,000,000+ bytes of data created.

§ Surveillance Footage: Generic metadata (date, time, location, etc.) is automatically attached to video files. However as IP cameras continue to proliferate, there is a greater opportunity to embed more intelligence into the camera on the edges so that footage can be captured, analysed, and tagged in real time. This type of tagging can expedite crime investigations for security insights, enhance retail analytics for consumer traffic patterns and of course improve military intelligence as videos from drones across multiple geographies are compared for pattern correlations, crowd emergence and response or measuring the effectiveness of counterinsurgency. 

§ Add a note hereEmbedded and Medical Devices: In future, sensors of all types including those that may be implanted into the body will capture vital and non-vital biometrics, track medicine effectiveness, correlate bodily activity with health, monitor potential outbreaks of viruses, etc. all in real time thereby realising automated healthcare with prediction and precaution. 
§ Add a note hereEntertainment and Social Media: Trends based on crowds or massive groups of individuals can be a great source of big data to help bring to market the "next big thing," help pick winners and losers in the stock market, and even predict the outcome of elections all based on information users freely publish through social outlets. 
§ Add a note hereConsumer Images: We say a lot about ourselves when we post pictures of ourselves or our families or friends. A picture used to be worth a thousand words but the advent of big data has introduced a significant multiplier. The key will be the introduction of sophisticated tagging algorithms that can analyse images either in real time when pictures are taken or uploaded or en masse after they are aggregated from various Websites.


§ Virtualized: A converged infrastructure requires the virtualization of all heterogeneous resources: compute, storage, networking, and I/O. Virtualization separates the applications, data, and network connections from the underlying hardware, thereby making it easier and faster to reallocate resources to match the changing performance, throughput, and capacity needs of individual applications. This end-to-end virtualization improves IT flexibility and response to business requests, ultimately improving business speed and agility.

§ Add a note hereResilient: A converged infrastructure integrates non-stop technologies and high availability policies. Because diverse applications share virtualized resource pools, a converged infrastructure must have an operating environment that automates high-availability policies to meet SLAs. A resilient, converged infrastructure provides the right level of availability for each business application.

§ Add a note hereOpen: Products are being built using open standards. This avoids vendor lock-in. Also interoperability and portability are easily accomplished. 


§ Add a note hereOrchestrated: A converged infrastructure orchestrates the business request with the applications, data, and infrastructure. It defines the policies and service levels through automated workflows, provisioning, and change management design by IT and the business. Orchestration provides an application-aligned infrastructure that can be scaled up or down based on the needs of each application. Orchestration also provides centralized management of the resource pool, including billing, metering, and chargeback for consumption. 

§ Add a note hereModular: A converged infrastructure is built on modular design principles based on open and interoperable standards. A modular approach allows IT to integrate new technologies with existing investments without having to start over. This approach also gives IT the ability to extend new capabilities and to scale capacity over time.