It is, by now, a cliché to say that data is big. In fact, it has exploded. As data floods into organizations from a range of new sources such as social media and machines, traditional approaches are having difficulty keeping pace.
According to a recent study of 217 IT and data managers by Unisphere Research, enterprises are encountering storage problems that are impacting the performance of related systems and applications. What is needed are smarter approaches. Inadequately configured and underperforming storage can have a chilling effect on business by slowing down the performance of applications and systems. The survey finds that a majority of respondents believe that at least some of the time their database or application performance is adversely affected by storage limitations. About a tenth of respondents say that application performance is hindered by storage shortcomings a significant amount of the time.
Efficient, secure storage plays a critical role in the enterprise. Smarter storage solutions, the survey points out, are coming to the fore, enabling greater efficiency through data compression, information lifecycle management, and tiered storage strategies.
Here are the winners of the 2014 DBTA Readers' Choice Awards for Best Data Storage Solution:
Winner: Violin Memory
Finalists:
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Oracle ZFS Storage