I have always supported the underdog. Maybe it’s the satisfaction you get when you overcome all the odds and win. Or just a maddening respect for the struggle, passion, and tenacity that the underdog often displays in the face of great obstacles. Like the true story of Billy Beane in the movie Moneyball. Oakland As General Manager of the Athletics, Bean used data and analytics to find underrated baseball players on a limited budget. In 2002, his data-driven baseball team went on to win 20 straight games and win the American League West while competing against franchises that spent more than twice as much as him on recruiting.
Bean was ahead of the curve by leveraging data to improve outcomes more than 20 years before the concept became popular. Data-driven insights are now widely accepted as a way to find smarter, more efficient approaches, and work across industries and company sizes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an analytical tool that extracts the vast value of data and transforms it into actionable, actionable insights.
In my role at Dell Technologies, I strive to help organizations accelerate the use of data, especially unstructured data, by democratizing the mass adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). The right technology infrastructure makes that possible. And it’s storage, a quiet but powerful enabler, that’s now taking center stage. Storage is the key to enabling and democratizing AI, regardless of business size, location or industry.
Addressing data access
In speaking with customers and organizations around the world, a trend has emerged of escalating data access and data storage problems, creating business roadblocks and stagnating progress. This is because data volume and complexity are growing rapidly, making data storage and accessibility essential and expensive. Data accessibility is exacerbated by the proliferation and potential of unstructured data. Its sheer volume can overwhelm Fortune 100 organizations, midsize organizations and start-ups, but unstructured data is key to breakthrough innovation. Therefore, organizations must solve their data access and storage challenges.
The value of data and its actionable insights is exponentially increased by artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. This is because data is seen as the pathway to achieving competitive differentiation and accelerating business outcomes. To capture this value, AI implementations are becoming mainstream as organizations move from research-based pilot programs to full-scale production deployments. The move to AI highlights an organization’s “last mile” challenge with data access (“last mile” means data is there but humans can’t use it), As a result, AI progress has stalled, forcing organizations to rethink their data storage strategies.
Rethinking data storage
Many organizations are turning to the cloud to handle most of their data storage needs. However, more data means more data movement, so the cloud-first storage approach is not suitable for growing data volumes. This incurs additional costs through ingress and egress fees and increases data latency, making cloud-first storage approaches ineffective for large-scale AI implementations.
Instead, organizations need new storage models designed to handle modern workloads in near real time. A storage platform must be easy to integrate, scalable, and validated for managing unstructured data, combining features such as file systems, volume managers, and data protection. An ideal platform should address the key challenges of unstructured data in the following ways:
- Deliver accessible, easy-to-find data quickly and accurately
- Store large amounts of data in a cost-effective manner
- Protect your files and data as they move and change over time.
By successfully addressing these needs, Dell Technologies helped one organization achieve a “technology touchdown” in Miami, Florida.
Enhanced experience at Hard Rock Stadium
Few environments require unstructured data to scale securely and on demand like a live sporting event. Variations in fan base size, video footage, and other variables present unique challenges. Dell ECS and Dell PowerScale are designed and tested for these types of on-demand challenges.
Contact Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida. The stadium uses the highly flexible and secure PowerScale platform to enhance the fan experience. It is for events and spectators of all sizes, such as the Miami Dolphin match, the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix, the Miami Open Tennis Tournament, international soccer, and even Super Bowl LIV, meeting the needs of a wide range of contactless fans and delivering results. Improve. Fans, franchises/organizations, event teams. Watch a 2-minute video of Hard Rock Stadium here.
The right storage does all that and more for organizations that want to leverage unstructured data at scale through AI. The benefits of doing so are great, but doing nothing can have serious and lasting consequences.
Elevate the role of storage
Billy Beane, who still supports the Oakland Athletics team to this day, will appreciate this sport-based customer story. It builds on his premise of moving forward harnessing the power of data unlocked by AI and enabled by flexible, scalable storage his platform.
Data last mile challenges waste the investment of retrieving and storing data at the most costly and inappropriate times. New storage models can mitigate this opportunity cost. That’s what I’m helping organizations around the world achieve. My goal is to democratize the use of AI and help build a stronger future for both the weak and the leaders, company by company.
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Read my related article on data management here.
In a world of unstructured and underutilized data, Dell Technologies storage solutions like ECS and PowerScale can help enhance your AI efforts. Learn more about.
Dell Technologies works with Intel to help organizations modernize their infrastructure and harness the power of data and AI. Infrastructure modernization starts with creating a more agile and scalable data architecture with the flexibility to support near real-time analytics. Analytical workloads now rely on new storage models that are more open, integrated, and secure by design, enabling organizations to unlock and harness the vast potential of their data. Learn more about.
Powering your business with data means making it easy to manage, process, and analyze data as part of your data pipeline, ensuring your infrastructure is ready for your data wherever it lives. Intel helps customers build modern data pipelines that can collect, extract, and store all kinds of data for advanced analysis and visualization.
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