Blogs

As we quickly approach 2022 (yes, I said it—and yes, this year has flown by), there is one thing in all the constant madness of the past 18 months that hasn't changed, and that's the fact that production teams are still struggling with perpetual data growth....

The term BI is nothing new—it’s a decade-old throwback that hearkens to a simpler time, when people first discovered that the data created within business systems could be interpreted to make more informed business decisions. Now, as we round the end of the first half of 2021, what was once a nice-to-have is imperative to business success and as much a part of business as an ERP or CRM.

If the past year has taught us anything, it's that marketing narratives drive us all up the proverbial wall. None is as horrible as the "new normal" phrase, thrown about with reckless abandon. Simply put, the concept of "new normal" is insulting. It means that, for reasons unbeknownst to all of us, we must now accept what 2020 and 2021 has done to our collective wellbeing, personal psyches, health, and global economy.

Doing what I do for a living, I have had the unique opportunity to peer under the hoods of a lot of companies across multiple industries. And whether it’s media and entertainment, sports, houses of worship or something else, the underlying theme never changes: data growth is affecting everyone.

All puns and cheesy social media article titles aside, network attached storage (NAS) is now a must-have for every serious, modern production company.

With overall data growing exponentially due to ever-increasing file sizes, the old-school approach of stacked-up hard drives and beefed-up workstations are no longer close to a viable solution.

More so, the result of ever-increasing data now collides with equally important business requirements—ensuring that seamless data access, data protection, and capacity and performance is a constant, never hampering productivity or profitability. So, it’s at this point you should be asking, “What can NAS do for me and my organization?”

Your data is threatened on many fronts, so it is critical you implement preventive measures.

It might surprise you to know that the top cause of data loss is not from the malicious activities of cyber criminals, but from natural disasters. From fire and flooding to earthquakes, natural disasters pose an enormous risk to your data and IT infrastructure.

What are the drivers of change in Store from your perspective?

Whereas the cost of fiber infrastructure has become prohibitively expensive, we have the cost of 25 and 100Gbit ethernet and NVMe decreasing rapidly. We have applications supporting high performance workflows using ethernet changing how content is edited at high speed. We have AI and other data analytics driving automated workflows, which call for single global namespaces and data movement to cloud. We have remote personnel driving change on how content is edited and accessed in parts of the workflow, where previously it was done on-premise only.

During these difficult times, budgets are tight—and many companies have delayed purchasing or upgrading their systems. Scale Logic’s Enterprise Support Services (ESS) can help by saving you money and extending the life of your existing hardware. They can typically save you 50- 70% of your hardware support costs when compared to the original manufacturers.

Many of our customers buy the manufacturer’s warranty for the first three years of their equipment’s life, but then on Year 4 they get a shock when they receive their annual support renewal quote. Why is that you may ask?

As 2020 marches on, the world anxiously looks ahead to the days where life gets back to normal. However, the greater question becomes: what is normal anymore?

As I’m sure you are very likely sitting at home reading this post, your work space—like millions of others—has shifted to the now-common non-office environment. And although the first several months were tough enough to get through—setting new work habits, along with the daily choice of pants or no pants—I’m sure you eventually adjusted as we all did.

But what happens going forward? Do we know? Does anyone even dare fathom a guess?

For all the IT terms and buzzwords that forever float in the ether, “data protection” is definitely among the most used. And, for most, the idea of protecting one’s data from harm is, of course, a good idea. After all, who wouldn’t want to protect their data, right?

But even with such a positive-sounding term, the question becomes, what exactly is data protection? Or more importantly, what does it entail?