When Opportunity Knocks, Big Data Kicks Open The Door

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Not Star Trek's Lieutenant Commander Data, although impressive, and dare say ahead of its time with a storage capacity of 100 Pb (800 quadrillion bits) and a total linear computational speed of 60 THz (60 trillion operations per second). I’m talking about bits and bytes of digital information that come in many forms but can be classified simply as structured data and unstructured data (email, audio, video, web pages, and more). And, growing, getting bigger by approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. In fact, last year, 2010, the amount of digital information created in the world exceeded a zettabyte (ZB) for the first time. Yes! That’s huge. Twenty one zeros huge, and as you can imagine there’s great value to be derived from all those bytes. That’s why many today are starting to refer to this explosion of digital information as “Big Data,” the next frontier, and why now is the time to embrace Information Optimization for enterprise innovation, productivity, growth, and opportunity.   

There’s Gold In Them Thar Hills

More than 80% of all data in an enterprise is unstructured information. The difficult part is panning for the value in it. Information workers today spend nearly a quarter of their time just searching for information, and delays in accessing this information can impact not only productivity, but also, for example, customer satisfaction and loyalty as well. But all that glitters isn’t gold as enterprises embark on the new data frontier they struggle to not only capture and store this growing amount of data but also with how to effectively analyze, and derive meaning and value from it. Many have already invested in a variety of IT tools like hardware infrastructure, business intelligence software, and cloud computing, while many others are recently getting started on the path to Information Optimization.

Paul McCartney Knows Information Optimization

MPL Communications, Ltd., the media company of legendary singer, song writer Paul McCartney, recently partnered with HP Enterprise Services to digitize, organize, and catalogue a half of century of treasured assets in Paul McCartney’s personal collection, including more than half a million photographs, years of video footage from live concerts, thousands of videotapes, rolls of film, notes, doodles, sketches, handwritten lyrics, and so on. HP solutions optimize access to the digital library’s assets via a private cloud, cached content delivery, advanced software, and the latest in HP servers and networking. This HP Converged Infrastructure enables content to be securely delivered instantly to Paul McCartney and MPL at anytime, and on any device. As Paul McCartney observes, “It’s really exciting because even if I’m out on tour anywhere in the world, I will be able to say, okay, “Wings 1976 tour” and instantly, it will come up. You’ve got all the information, all the photos from it. And you’ll have written accounts - personal accounts and critical accounts - of what happened.” To learn more about HP solutions that are the engine behind the McCartney digital library, Select here.

Insight

The Instant-On Enterprise harnesses the power of information to help executives make better decisions at any time, on any device, from any place. Is your stored enterprise information and data working for you? Is it helping you maximize business opportunities? With HP Information Optimization you can effectively transform your data into actionable insights to deliver better products and services to your customers by changing how your informational assets are captured, stored and analyzed.

Have you started on your own path toward information optimization? If so, what tools are you using? Do you have any success stories you want to share?