Oracle study shows data demands drive new data centre installations

Research from Oracle across 10 regions has found that an organisation’s growth in data is becoming a boardroom issue.

The survey of 900 IT professionals found that businesses have been caught unaware by the scale of data they collect driven by machine-to-machine communications, smartphones, the Smart Grid and on-demand home entertainment.

Oracle’s research highlights that businesses are only now working towards changing the data centre to support big data. In fact, 200 of the people surveyed said that new data investment was being driven by the need to support business growth.

According to IDC there will be 15 billion devices connected to the internet by 2015, up from three billion today and data growth is outpacing storage by a factor of 2:1.

Luc Opdebeeck, senior vice president, Oracle Emea hardware strategy, said, “People are starting to see value in data. How companies handle big data should be on their balance sheet.” Opdebeeck stressed that while the board wanted to hear what was happening in the data centre, “data” was not getting enough attention.

Oracle is selling the idea of an integrated approach to data management, combining its hardware and software in products like Oracle Exadata.