AN Oracle report entitled: Next Generation Data Centre Index Cycle II reveals that many businesses seem to have been caught off guard by the boom in 'Big Data.'The findings also suggest data has become an issue for boardroom consideration, while sustainability is back on the agenda.The report follows Cycle 1 of the Next Generation Data Centre Index, announced in May 2011, which established that many businesses are lagging behind in their use of innovative technology in data centres, making them less able to meet industry demands and respond to change quickly, adding that, many were also found to be lagging in terms of managing spiraling energy costs.But, the new research - Cycle 2 shows there has been improvement in the general performance of many organisations, as measured in three key areas: achieving data centre flexibility, sustainability and supportability.According to the report, taken as an overall average across these three sub-indices, businesses scored 5.58 on a scale of 0 to 10 (where 10 would be the most sophisticated data centre strategy possible, assessed by analyst house Quocirca1), compared to 5.22 in the first report.The report noted that the proportion of respondents with in-house-only data centres is down from 60 per cent (C1) to 44 per cent (C2), whereas, those using some external data centres rose from 40 per cent (C1) to 56 per cent in (C2).Going forward, the report observed that, many more businesses now see a need within two years to build new data facilities, up from 27 per cent in C1 to 38 per cent in C2.Meanwhile, in the area of sustainability, fewer respondents report not having a sustainability plan in place in C2 (6.39 per cent against 13.19 per cent), while the number of data centre managers seeing a copy of the energy bill have risen from 43.16 per cent to 52.19 per cent in C2.'We are seeing similar trends to EMEA across Africa,' said Vice President, Hardware Sales, Middle East and Africa, Oracle, Tom Pegrume.He said, 'there is a visible acceleration in consolidation, virtualisation and systems management. We are seeing increasing alignment between IT and business with many companies taking advantage of the radically improved price performance on new technology to develop innovative products and services that were not possible two or three years ago.'To Senior Vice President, Systems, Oracle EMEA, Luigi Freguia , 'wrestling with Big Data is going to be the single biggest IT challenge businesses face over the next two years. By the end of that period they will either have got it right or they will be very seriously adrift of their own business and the threats and opportunities posed by Big Data.'Encouragingly, this research suggests businesses realise they have a need to catch up on data within their organisation,' he stated.According to him, many are looking at a combination of short-term need and longer term planning, they are looking to outsourced solutions in the short-term while planning long-term to build something in-house.'The unique challenge of Big Data represents the coming together of many IT trends ' the growth in connected applications, devices, systems and individuals in both the consumer and business world creating vast amounts of structured and unstructured data through everything they do. Mining and understanding that data holds the key to business success and that process must begin in the data centre. The findings of this report suggest businesses are becoming aware of this and are rapidly trying to get on top of their short and long-term data needs', he stated.
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