Preparing For The Cloud? Fix The Data Problem First

Cloud computing is rapidly becoming the holy grail of enterprise computing, with most CIOs, network managers and IT departments investigating how they can develop and leverage a cloud strategy. Most enterprises today maintain enormous distributed architectures across multiple, disparate data centres that require huge amounts of compute power to move the correct operational data to the right applications and people in real-time. While moving resources to a private or public cloud can reap major cost-saving rewards, that move has to incorporate an elastic data infrastructure, one that makes data ubiquitous and available that much faster to the applications and users that need it the most. This type of elastic data infrastructure will power dynamically scalable architectures that can add new applications or users with no visible drain on infrastructure resources. But where do companies start when seeking to implement an elastic data infrastructure to increase resiliency and manage data in preparation for a move to either a public or private cloud?