Colossal amounts of data will get cheaper to manage

By John Agsalud

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, May 29, 2012

~~<p>Like a hungry lion coming over the hill, massive amounts of data are hitting businesses and government agencies at an increasing pace. Solutions to handle such data, while still pricey, are becoming more common and thus more affordable. What can organizations do to handle the onslaught of so-called Big Data?</p>
<p>Before we tackle that question, let's make sure we define what we mean by "massive." Nowadays it is not uncommon for organizations to be dealing with multiple terabytes of data, but we see only a select few folks dealing with petabytes, which is a thousand (give or take) terabytes. A few years ago, only the geekiest of us even knew what a terabyte was (1,000 gigabytes), much less a petabyte! By the way, the next unit of measure is exabyte, which is a thousand petabytes. When we start defining solutions for exabytes, that will mean that petabyte-capable solutions are commonplace.</p>
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Like a hungry lion coming over the hill, massive amounts of data are hitting businesses and government agencies at an increasing pace. Solutions to handle such data, while still pricey, are becoming more common and thus more affordable. What can organizations do to handle the onslaught of so-called Big Data?

Before we tackle that question, let's make sure we define what we mean by "massive." Nowadays it is not uncommon for organizations to be dealing with multiple terabytes of data, but we see only a select few folks dealing with petabytes, which is a thousand (give or take) terabytes. A few years ago, only the geekiest of us even knew what a terabyte was (1,000 gigabytes), much less a petabyte! By the way, the next unit of measure is exabyte, which is a thousand petabytes. When we start defining solutions for exabytes, that will mean that petabyte-capable solutions are commonplace. Login for more...