NEXTDC : Finding better ways to navigate a data tsunami

By Adam Scully, Chief Sales Officer

As your digital transformation accelerates, so too will your challenges around security, compliance and resilience of the increasing volume of data under management.

Terabytes of data are being generated, shared, analysed and stored today but that tsunami is just a ripple compared to what we can expect in the future. Analysts estimate the amount of data in existence is doubling every 18-24 months so now is the time to turn attentions to the most efficient, cost effective ways to protect, archive and easily leverage this information tide.

Data is gold, managing it doesn't have to be complex

In addition to bulging in mass, data has also emerged as every organisation's most valuable asset. It's the fuel powering strategic direction, productivity and cost savings that in turn create competitive advantage, business continuity and positive bottom-line outcomes.

Data can only be fully leveraged as an asset if you have complete visibility and easy, affordable tools and processes to identify and quickly pluck the golden needles out of the haystack of information.

Ever accelerating complexities in architecting the infrastructure required to manage, interconnect and secure data has seen a massive shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure models in delivery of many I.T services. Virtualisation, cloud computing and diversified, colocated interconnected ecosystems have transformed I.T forever.

First popularised by the cost reduction, productivity and flexibility benefits it introduces, 'as-a-Service' (aaS) I.T delivery models play a crucial and growing role in how people, locations, organisations and sources of information are interconnected.

Everything about the way the economy functions today has changed. In the digital era, much of the way we research, communicate, partner and transact will have XaaS technology at its core delivering efficiency, resilience and scalability benefits.

aaS changing the ecosystem

Building a successful business model on XaaS technology delivery is dependent on underlying principles of partnering wisely and innovating continuously. It's a common theme across our ecosystem for partners to disrupt by focusing on what they do best and relying on complementary and supplementary organisations for the rest.

These characteristics apply equally to many of our ecosystem partners. In the case of Sydney-based MediaHub, years of innovation around data carriage and archiving has seen them elevated in status to a critical service provider in the broadcast media industry.

MediaHub knows all too well the role premium quality infrastructure plays in delivering its services. They have built a reputation on supporting broadcasters and streaming services dealing in huge volumes of high definition, multimedia content - managing carriage and archiving across the full lifecycle from source to consumer wherever they may be.

Their market-leading capabilities provide resilient connectivity and application platforms that traffic huge volumes of data with up to 400GBps of reading and writing capability across its network. They work largely on an aaS delivery model which allows their customers to store unlimited data across their infrastructure which is largely housed in NEXTDC colocation facilities.

Success in aaS models is based on partnering with the best service and telecommunications network providers while adding unique value under architecture delivery and revenue models that allow customers to only pay for what they use and to scale up and down as required.

Not just for broadcasters

Expertise in capturing, sharing, storing and archiving large datasets is of increasing relevance to many other digitally transforming industry verticals. That's why there's a lot of interest in MediaHub's new ArkHub service - a new generation, broad-based Storage-as-a-Service platform built for simplicity with no compromise on redundancy, security, easy access and availability.

ArkHub comes with a 100% uptime guarantee by virtue of NEXTDC's power, cooling, security and connectivity infrastructure SLAs, and 99.999999999999% data durability thanks to MediaHub's expertise in data management.

This innovative data management service gives organisations the opportunity to deploy an agnostic Storage-as-a-Service solution. ArkHub offers all the features of the major deep archive vendors but without the complex ingress, egress, retrieval and locational costs associated with global cloud vendors. With all hardware underpinning the service managed in Australia's most reliable data centres, they are also able to support data sovereignty obligations.

Aiming to disrupt traditional deep archive services, MediaHub are taking mass storage to another level by adding unprecedented capability for customers to move, retrieve and maintain large amounts of data through long established file management interfaces all organisations are familiar with. And, they're doing this on local infrastructure, without any bill shock-creating fine-print on SLAs.

Customers simply pay a fixed monthly fee per GB of data. No additional fees are charged, and the data is always accessible from hardware and media formats that are always updated, maintained, backed up and visible via any authenticated device.

Innovative approach

To underpin the resilience and performance of this innovative deep archive service, MediaHub has built a fully redundant fibre ring incorporating completely geo-diverse network routes using their own dark fibre assets and multiple services from carrier companies. It has scalable infrastructure in premium colocation facilities, which means there are no limits to the amount of data that can be held under management.

It's innovative companies like MediaHub that have helped advance the quality of broadcasting and it is colocation data centres like NEXTDC's that are driving efficiencies in managing large volumes of data in the digital era.

By not having to worry about core data centre functions, MediaHub can devote more of its resources in creating a better performing data storage and sharing platform.

With the launch of ArkHub, industry verticals such as health, education, financial services and government are all targeted as beneficiaries of organisations being swamped by critical data that is driving growth, strategic direction and organisational performance.

They need management and usability strategies they can apply to ever-expanding volumes of data and they need to know it is being stored under safe, secure and trusted processes in compliance with regulatory obligations.

If we can help you streamline how you manage your growing data volumes and support your cloud journey, reach out to our team.