The Dawn of the Data Economy

We are rapidly entering a new era.

The era where data is the lifeblood of the worldwide economy.

The era where organizations that learn how to channel their data will survive.

The era where those that do not will become dinosaurs.

The Data Economy is Here--And Everywhere

The Data Economy will touch every part of our daily lives. From automobiles to healthcare, banking to groceries, earthquakes and hurricane prediction to travel planning and everything in between.  Virtually no aspect of our lives will be untouched.

Storing, analyzing, and acting on insights garnered from vast amounts of data will be the hallmark of successful organizations in the very near future. Actually, it’s already happening. Just look at leading-edge examples of businesses such as Amazon and Google, which are wildly successful with business models built on data intelligence.

The Right Data and Their Insights: No Longer “Nice to Have”

But soon, every business--no matter how large or small--must have these capabilities. Successful organizations will be the ones that figure out how to capture all data about their businesses, from supply chain to manufacturing to inventories to competitor and customer data.

Figuring out what data are important and which are not will be critical. Analyzing that data will become a competitive differentiator initially and a must-have capability in the long term. And, most important, acting on that data with real-time accuracy will determine the winners and... the dinosaurs.

In the Modern Data Pool It’s Sink or Swim

It’s easy to build systems that can store tens and even hundreds of terabytes of data. But in this new Data Economy, organizations must scale their data storage capabilities into tens and hundreds of petabytes… and beyond. Soon, we’ll be generating zettabytes of information globally. The pace at which business-critical data is growing is staggering.

Retaining that sea of data in a way that’s highly scalable, automated, performant, and cost effective will be imperative. Old ways of retaining this data simply don’t meet these requirements.

It’s with this vision for the not-too-distant future that Red Hat added Ceph software-defined storage (SDS) to its portfolio in April 2014. Ceph delivers world-class object, block, and file storage for businesses deploying public or private clouds.

Ceph has a long-standing history as a software defined storage solution. Over 50% of users surveyed for the November 2017 OpenStack User Survey indicated they are using Ceph as their backend storage solution. According to the user survey, the OpenStack Median Cloud Profile indicates Ceph is the primary block storage driver in use overall.

There are many businesses who have turned to Ceph for their storage solution of choice: from financial services and healthcare to government services and retail. As the Data Economy continues to grow, Ceph will continue to play a key role as a massively scalable data lake repository.

The Ceph Foundation Has Arrived

And today, we are pleased to announce Red Hat’s continued commitment to keep Ceph an open and accessible technology through our participation in the newly created Ceph Foundation. This foundation, the successor framework to the Ceph Advisory Board, will enable the collaboration of organizations that want to see the Data Economy realized.

Join the Ceph Ranks

Get involved in the Ceph community at https://ceph.com/get-involved/ or learn more about membership at https://ceph.com/foundation.