Cloud Object storage: Making big data challenges smaller

Cloud providers have realized that cloud object storage services are a powerful way to turn "big data" market hype into cash. Large data analysis extracts information from unstructured data, which is too clumsy for the traditional block storage technology offered by most cloud providers.

Many enterprise customers are struggling to adjust their existing internal IT infrastructures and traditional data warehouses, and cloud providers are finding the services that are based on cloud object storage, offering not only cost reductions, but also technical challenges for customers and large data management.

Cloud Object storage: Unstructured data structure

Collecting and storing large datasets is daunting for businesses of any size, and accessing, organizing, and analyzing unstructured data creates a lot of new challenges for businesses. Using block storage technology to handle large data requires an enterprise to construct a complex data model to organize unstructured data in advance. Object storage can eliminate costly steps by allowing enterprises to consolidate metadata into their unstructured data, said Dave Bartoletti, a senior analyst at Forrester study. "Cloud storage is a much easier way to handle a lot of structure than good data, but it should be handled with storage," he said.

Object storage technology holds data and cloud data together, providing security, authentication, and context for enterprise information and applications, a particularly notable performance for industry is compliance, and most of these are rich media, Adrian Herrera He is the senior marketing director of Caringo, an object storage software provider.

"In traditional cloud storage, user files store very little information," says Herrera, "but as the dataset grows, storage solutions need to be able to efficiently store custom metadata through the object itself." ”

Access is even more important for large data, and to be able to search, object storage provides built-in security features beyond traditional cloud storage, says Herrera. Caringo Object storage products allow customers to store data as fixed objects, audit and defend each object, and assist customers in complying with compliance.

As cloud applications attract highly regulated industries, especially vertical markets, such as health care, are seeking object-storage value for a large number of patient files, including X-rays and MRI files, he said.

While large cloud vendors, such as Amazon, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, are selling object-storage products outside their traditional cloud-storage offerings, object storage is another option, but not a substitute for traditional block storage. The enterprise that selects block storage on top of object storage is for faster access to everyday applications, but object storage is better adapted to super large datasets and can be easily scaled. "Object storage is another type of storage, and cloud providers must understand that object storage is well suited to specific application and process requirements," says Forrester's Bartoletti.

Transferring data is half the success

While cloud storage providers can influence more customers moving to the cloud through object storage offerings, the challenge is to transfer data from the enterprise Data Warehouse to the cloud, says Sam Barnett, a Infonetics data center and executive analyst at the Cloud. "Even if the Internet connection is very good, many users are still grappling with how to transfer large data to the cloud provider," he said.

Because most customers do not have a large Ethernet pipeline to connect them to a cloud provider, many cloud service providers overcome difficulties by taking snapshots of customer data or by replicating them from their customers ' websites. While different cloud providers adopt different approaches, the biggest problem is still transferring data to the cloud, Barnett said.

Large data analysis is a great opportunity for cloud object storage providers, but data mining requires specific software. To be able to store and quickly access data, object storage is significant for business customers, Barnett said.

(Responsible editor: Schpeppen)