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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Oracle says businesses cut off in data boom


The latest report released by Oracle entitled Next Generation Data Centre Index Cycle II has revealed that many businesses seem to have been caught off guard by the boom in ‘Big Data.’ Oracle stated that the findings also suggested data has become an issue for boardroom consideration, while sustainability is back on the agenda.

A press statement from Oracle Corporation made available to ITRealms Online shows that the report follows Cycle 1 (C1) of the Next Generation Data Centre Index, made public in May 2011.

Oracle thus established that many businesses are lagging behind in their use of innovative technology in data centres, making them less able to meet industry demands and respond to change quickly.

“Many were also found to be lagging in terms of managing spiraling energy costs,” part of the press statement endorsed by Claire Alexander read.

Further, Oracle indicated that the new research, that is Cycle 2 (C2) showed there has been improvement in the general performance of many organisations, as measured in three key areas, namely the achieving data centre flexibility, sustainability and supportability.

Equally, the report indicated that taken as an overall average across these three sub-indices, businesses scored 5.58 on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 would be the most sophisticated data centre strategy possible, assessed by analyst house Quocirca1, and compared to 5.22 in the first report.

Some other key index numbers include that the proportion of respondents with in-house-only data centres is down from 60 per cent (C1) to 44 per cent (C2). While those using some external data centres have risen from 40 per cent (C1) to 56 per cent.

The report added that many more businesses now see a need within two years to build new data facilities, up from 27 per cent in C1 to 38 per cent in C2.

Whereas, sustainability is back on the agenda, fewer respondents reported they do not have sustainability plan in place in C2, recording 6.39 per cent against 13.19 per cent, while the number of data centre managers seeing a copy of the energy bill has risen from 43.16 per cent to 52.19 per cent in C2.

The vice president, Hardware Sales, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Oracle, Mr. Tom Pegrume, was quoted as saying that they are seeing similar trends to EMEA across Africa.

“There is a visible acceleration in consolidation, virtualisation and systems management. We are seeing increasing alignment between IT and business with many companies taking advantage of the radically improved price performance on new technology to develop innovative products and services that were not possible two or three years ago,” he observed.

Also, the senior vice president, Systems, Oracle EMEA, Luigi Freguia, said “Wrestling with Big Data is going to be the single biggest IT challenge businesses face over the next two years. By the end of that period they will either have got it right or they will be very seriously adrift of their own business and the threats and opportunities posed by Big Data.”

He pointed out that encouragingly, this research suggested businesses realise they have a need to catch up on data within their organisation,

“Many are looking at a combination of short-term need and longer term planning. They are looking to outsourced solutions in the short-term while planning long-term to build something in-house,” he said.

Just as the unique challenge of big data represents the coming together of many IT trends, the growth in connected applications, devices, systems and individuals in both the consumer and business world creating vast amounts of structured and unstructured data through everything they do.

Freguia described mining and understanding of what data holds as the key to business success and that process must begin in the data centre.

“The findings of this report suggest businesses are becoming aware of this and are rapidly trying to get on top of their short and long-term data needs,” he said.

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D Short URLs: goo.gl, mcaf.ee, cli.gs

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