On Wednesday Microsoft revealed that its Azure cloud had grown to 50 trillion storage objects, an increase of 20 trillion since last year. Another 200,000 SQL databases were established in Azure in that time, raising the total to 1.4 million SQL databases.
Just in Azure alone we can see how data growth continues as detailed in Microsoft Build. The proliferation of data will only become more intense as businesses bring in more data from multiple sources to try to put actionable data into the hands of the users.
IDC forecasts that digital data will double every two years, hitting 40,000 exabytes (40 zetabytes) in 2020. The forecast suggests that global data will reach 7.9 Zetabytes in 2015, up from 1.2 Zetabytes in 2010.
The cloud is considered ideal for storing, managing and accessing large amounts of data. Access to “big data” is one of the driving forces behind the growth in cloud-based software. Nearly one-third (30%) of the money spent on IT infrastructure is being used to snap up cloud-enabling technologies, according to IT analyst IDC.
In 2013, only 22% of the information in the digital universe was a candidate for analysis, according to an IDC survey; less than 5% of that was actually analyzed. By 2020, the useful percentage could grow to more than 35%, mostly because of the growth of data from embedded systems.
Of the useful data, IDC estimates that in 2013 perhaps 5% was especially valuable, or “target rich.” That figure should more than double by 2020 as enterprises take advantage of new data and analytics technologies and new data sources, and apply them to new parts of the organization.
Morningstar says organizations that can efficiently and productively use this massive influx of information will gain an edge on competitors. The investment research firm felt that legacy business intelligence products do not have the data discovery capabilities of the newer vendors. They lacked intuitive or visual querying and on-the-fly data discovery, data mashup ability, and easy installation and implementation. They are more costly than self-service BI solutions because they still rely on in-house experts, such as data scientists or database administrators, to run them.
This large influx of data can be tamed and made actionable by putting it in reports, dashboards and visualizations seamlessly integrated into the application business users leverage every day. Ultimately data is only actionable if it is put into a report, dashboard or visualization that a business user can understand and interact with in real-time.
More than three-quarters of ISVs and almost half of user organizations embed BI software today. With self-service embedded BI, users can manage their own data sets, either on premises or in the cloud, as well as create and customize their own reports with straightforward drag and drop features.
Self-service BI enables business leaders to manage their own BI applications, freeing them from the hurdles, costs and lead times associated with IT-managed platforms. They in turn can give real-time access to data for all users.
To support ISVs in the development of superior applications, Izenda continues to focus on embedded BI capabilities in a highly-configurable platform that seamlessly integrates with the application business users interact with every day.
We’ll continue to report on the Microsoft Build conference this week, bringing updates that relate to ISVs and solutions providers.
Izenda is an integration-ready web application that allows organizations with on-premise, cloud, SaaS, and enterprise applications to deliver modern self-service reports, dashboards, and visualizations.
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