The latest buzz about “Big Data” has changed how board rooms worldwide look at their IT storage environments.

Not that long ago, data storage was a place to preserve corporate data and comply with mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Now, executives see it as an opportunity to create a repository of all corporate data to fuel growth.

Unfortunately, traditional data center infrastructures and data protection efforts will not be able to efficiently and effectively sustain this influx of data. Only new architectures featuring virtualization, platform federation, forward-error correction coding, and scalable growth capabilities can fully harness and leverage Big Data.

In this day and age, it can be tough to justify new IT investments. However, there are significant steps that your data center can take.

Redefine management efficiency

In a petabyte world, the only way IT can manage data is by shifting the management burden off from the shoulder of IT administrators. Scaleable storage systems can automate management tasks such as rebalancing workloads, generation of virtual and physical data copies, content distribution, provisioning of capacity and services, internal governance, external compliance, data identification, and archiving.

Limit the impact of data migrations

Storage system replacements can be costly. The impact on system resources, staffing, and exposure to risk can be reduced by using a storage platform that offers single-image scalability, upgrades via software revisions, and non-disruptive replacement of hardware modules.

Sustain performance as well as growth

It is important to link performance with measurements such as access density and bandwidth when evaluating a scalable storage platform. However, don’t overlook whether the system can meet present and future capacity demand while still performing at peak levels.

Confront rising energy costs

Rising demand for storage also leads to higher energy costs. When evaluating your storage system, explore whether you can add capacity to a single-image platform without duplicating ancillary, power-consuming hardware.

Make your provisioning process more efficient

When supporting virtual desktops, mobile devices, and data analytics applications, provisioning is more critical than ever before. However, the financial impact of this process extends well beyond additional storage capacity. By streamlining this process, businesses can accelerate capacity administrative and management tasks in a growing data environment.

Get the most out of compression, de-duplication, and thin provisioning

As data continues to grow, make room for new data. Leverage the latest technology for de-duplication, compression, and thin provisioning to reduce your physical system footprint without any performance impact.

Data generated with Web and mobile device interactions can be leveraged to create new business opportunities and enhance everyday lives. But how your business decides to store this data and analyze it can be the deciding factor between business growth and stagnation.