23 June 2020
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4 min read
For a long time, businesses have been told that their data is one of their most important assets. That by leveraging the value in their data, it would be possible to derive hidden insights that would make them more efficient, help them serve their customers better, and make them more profitable. This is a challenge that CIOs have been grappling with for a long time.
Squeezing the value out of every asset a business has is now more important than ever, and for most, if not all, data will rank toward the top of the list of leverageable assets. Analytics, AI, IoT, edge computing, containerisation and AR/VR are all heavily data-driven, and business executives understand that without good data governance they are losing ground to their competition.
Businesses need to make data driven decisions; they need to be able to anticipate changes in the market using insights. This is what is going to help them flex with the uncertainty of the coming months and succeed.
For many businesses, this promise has not yet been realised. Many have begun to take advantage of the technologies mentioned above, such as AI or analytics, but they haven't yet been able to do so to the fullest potential. Managing big data isn't easy. Storing petabytes or exabytes of data is not particularly difficult but being able to store it in a way that lets people access it, analyse it and create models with it is a different challenge entirely.
Going big
The majority of database management systems leverage in-memory database structures. The challenge is that as data volumes grow exponentially, memory size becomes restrictive and expensive. Businesses want to take advantage of new workloads that need faster processing performance and massive memory and faster storage.
Not only does persistent memory provide an affordable alternative to expensive DRAM, but it also delivers the huge capacity necessary to accommodate new and emerging workloads. Other benefits are achievable as well, such as improving total cost of ownership through node reduction, licensing costs and other operational efficiencies.
Cut the complexity
There are of course challenges to overcome as organisations look to adopt the infrastructure they need to capitalise on new opportunities. Managing and processing data is already very complex, and this is why a lot of businesses struggle to take full advantage of leveraging it. A key concern for many organisations is that they do not want to add yet another layer of complexity, pushing them even further away from their goal of building agile digital services.
What is important here is that you create convergence, not complexity. You need to unify compute, network and storage performance in an optimised software ecosystem. With Intel's Xeon scalable processors, you have the ideal platform on which to run software-defined data centres that dynamically self-provision based on workload requirements.
Avoiding downtime
Downtime can quickly end up costing organisations a lot of money and as such is avoided at every cost. It is often bemoaned in the business and IT worlds, but there is good reason that a lot of IT budget ends up going on ongoing maintenance and management of systems; those costs can pale in comparison the expense of being offline.
Compounding this is the fact that, under current circumstances, organisations are relying almost entirely on digital platforms and channels to communicate, operate, and sell.
To ensure platform resiliency and uptime, businesses need to make sure that they are deploying highly trusted infrastructure platforms that are underpinned by robust reliability, availability and serviceability features. Combine this with advanced Intel Run Sure technology and organisations can be certain that they can run mission-critical workloads whilst maintaining data integrity.
Invest to the max
Current budgets are incredibly tight. As businesses prepare to weather a likely recession and long-term economic uncertainty, business spending is under increased scrutiny as the preservation of liquidity becomes a chief concern.
With the correct platform, organisations can in fact lower their total cost of ownership. Where once processors were underutilised because they were constrained by the associated memory infrastructure, now organisations can maximise their full potential. By consolidating workloads to concentrate them on fewer nodes, you can save on more deployments and ensure that you get the biggest return possible on your investment in your data infrastructure.
Moreover, as we look ahead to the future, putting the right infrastructure in place now will pay dividends going forward. Organisations will need scalable, secure and agile platforms upon which to build the digital services required to navigate the challenging economic headwinds brought on by the global pandemic.
Launch new innovation
If businesses truly wish to break through their data challenges and launch new innovative services, then they need to get their data and infrastructure in order. As noted above, doing so is as important now as it has ever been, with businesses relying on innovation in digital services to help them survive through the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor family provides the foundation for a powerful data center platform that creates an evolutionary leap in agility and scalability. Disruptive by design, this innovative processor sets a new level of platform convergence and capabilities across compute, storage, memory, network, and security. Enterprises and cloud and communications service providers can now drive forward their most ambitious digital initiatives with a feature-rich, highly versatile platform.
Learn more about Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor family on Tech Data's Channel Academy.
