If you think you’ve got a lot of data, check out GigaOm’s look at some of the largest data giants ever. Facebook, for example, is expecting to store its 100 billionth photo this year.
How are they doing it? It’s about their software more than their hardware, because the software determines a lot about the physicial infrastructure required.
Facebook, Amazon and Google are all decoupling their systems from proprietary hardware. The extreme scale of their data storage makes it necessary to strip away anything that isn’t absolutely necessary for storing and recalling petabytes or exabytes of data safely and efficiently.
Does this trend foretell the future of enterprise storage in general? It’s not clear, but businesses have the same challenges on a smaller scale.
Is so, there is change and turmoil ahead for the established IT vendor world order. What else is new?
