Object Storage Helps Create Data-Driven Business Models: Joan Wrabetz, HGST

HGST, Inc. (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, deals with all-flash arrays, object storage, and hybrid cloud storage solutions. HGST helps enterprises with storage systems that supports data architecture strategy for hybrid cloud and workloads such as content delivery and genome sequencing.

- Ed Nair

Where do storage technologies feature in the world of digital transformation? There is no argument that we live in a data-driven world spurred on by digital transformation. The challenges in digital transformation are fourfold: data monetization, data architecture strategy, best practices in managing data, and managing data in the cloud. Note that all the challenges of digital transformation have a direct implication on data. This connects the dots between digital transformation and data.

Now let me bring in storage technology and connect it to data. The value of data comes in when you can monetize it either directly or through the insights gleaned from the data. The right kind of storage determines the availability of data. The data that the organization already possesses is either on tape and hence cannot be accessed readily or that the data is in silos or that the data cannot be shared.

What kind of a storage solution would help with data?

The solution to this is to build a large-scale storage system, specifically a petabyte-scale object storage with cloud-native S3 interface, that lends itself to extreme durability. Such a system helps create data-centric business models.