The rapid growth of unstructured data, fueled in part by the rise of AI and machine learning, is creating new challenges for businesses. Traditional storage architectures struggle to keep up with the scale, performance and flexibility needed to unlock the full value of this data. At the 54th IT Press Tour, Quantum Corporation showcased how it is developing its end-to-end portfolio to help organizations overcome these obstacles and gain more insights from their data.
A deluge of unstructured data
“More than 80% of all data is unstructured and growing rapidly,” said Jamie Lerner, CEO and President of Quantum. “Artificial intelligence technologies can unlock meaningful insights and business value. Data infrastructure must preserve data for decades to power AI models.”
A comprehensive approach to data management
Quantum believes that organizations need a comprehensive approach that spans the entire data lifecycle, from high-performance primary storage to long-term archives, to fully harness the power of unstructured data. This is reflected in their portfolio of flash, disk, object and tape storage products, as well as data management and enrichment software.
Introducing ActiveScale Z200: Scalable all-flash object storage
One of the key additions to Quantum’s lineup is the new ActiveScale Z200 platform. According to Tim Sherbak of Quantum’s product marketing, this all-flash object storage platform provides “unlimited scale and performance for AI and analytics workloads.” It also offers flexible use of flash memory for object data and metadata. By bringing “hyperscale cloud architecture to your enterprise, on-premises environment,” the ActiveScale Z200 enables organizations to build scalable data lakes that can support demanding AI workloads.
DXi T-Series: Simplified high-performance backup
Along with the Z200, Quantum is releasing the DXi T-Series, a new line of all-NVMe backup devices. These turnkey devices make it easy for users to implement high-performance data protection without the complexity of building their own system. By enabling faster backup and recovery, the T-Series can help organizations improve data resilience as they grapple with growing volumes of unstructured data.
The need for an AI-ready data strategy
But the new hardware is only part of Quantum’s strategy. Lerner emphasized that to remain competitive in an AI-driven world, organizations must rethink how they manage their data and derive insights from it. “Customers recognize that an AI strategy leads to greater company value. Companies that use AI are likely to have a better outcome and a higher stock price.”
Overcoming infrastructure obstacles
However, many enterprises find that their existing storage infrastructure is not suitable for this new paradigm. In the Quantum survey, top user challenges included the need for more data insights (27%), more efficient storage (25%) and end-to-end automation tools (21%) to support evolving data pipelines.
“Traditional storage systems have limited ability to scale performance, are difficult to manage and create silos that impede data flow,” explained Lerner. In contrast, Quantum’s portfolio is designed to provide a more unified, software-defined and automated approach to managing unstructured data.
Enabling data enrichment and insights
In addition to hardware, Quantum is investing in new data services and software capabilities to simplify and enrich AI and analytics workflows. These include tools for automatically tagging data with metadata, enabling multidimensional data views, optimizing cost/performance when moving data between tiers, and tighter integration with the broader AI/ML ecosystem.
“An AI model built on a company’s unique data provides a competitive advantage,” Lerner said. “Our goal is to enable customers to easily ingest, enrich and retain massive unstructured data sets as the foundation for AI-driven insights.”
The future of unstructured data management
Looking ahead, Quantum foresees the growth of AI and real-time analytics to drive further convergence of traditional storage categories such as primary NAS, object storage and archive tiers. As this happens, software-defined data management and enrichment capabilities will become increasingly critical to helping users effectively manage data storage and processing.
By enabling scalable storage platforms as well as software to enrich and manage unstructured data, Quantum is positioning itself as a strategic partner for enterprises looking to take advantage of the next wave of AI-driven innovation. Their integrated portfolio approach aims to give clients the flexibility to start small and scale seamlessly as data volumes grow and new use cases emerge.
As Lerner summarized, “Our vision is to simplify the way customers manage unstructured data at every stage, so they can spend more time extracting insights and less time wrestling with infrastructure.”