A recent post, on the cost and impact of persisted data, got me thinking: If data is the new oil, as some believe, then data virtualization is akin to the electrification of gas/petrol-powered cars.
An Inconvenient Truth
Cloud migration strategies, such as those enabled by data virtualization, which can integrate data without replication, are desperately needed to overcome what some call humanity’s largest existential threat – global warming.
According to the International Energy Agency, data centers are said to account for 1% of the global electricity demand, contributing to 0.3% of total carbon emissions worldwide. This number is only predicted to grow. Water consumption, for cooling physical data warehouses, is also believed to be detrimental to the environment, especially when such warehouses are located in water-scarce regions such as Arizona or Sub Saharan Africa.
Despite the high cost and environmental burden to maintain, the majority of the world’s data is redundant, unnecessary, and wasteful. Over the last decade, studies have reported that less than 1 to 12 percent of global data is analyzed. This means that despite the variety in reporting, most data sits idle.
Moreover, only 10% of data is unique in any given year, according to a recent IDC report. This may possibly be due to the lack of interoperability between the sources of data and older analytic methods that require the user to first copy, replicate, and change the data to a new format to create uniformity among the different data sources before it can be analyzed. This method increases the need for more storage, bringing us closer to environmental cataclysm.
Data does not need to be the cause of anyone’s climate anxiety, however.
A Powerful Approach
Thankfully, the technology to enable data warehouse offloading and cloud migration with zero business interruptions, as well as efficient analytics to reduce waste, is offered through a logical approach powered by data virtualization, such as the approach employed by the Denodo Platform.
Like driving in the carpool lane, data analytics is more efficient with data virtualization. Through the Denodo Platform, diverse data sources are integrated across heterogeneous landscapes, presenting a single source of truth for real-time analytics on a user-friendly platform without the need to replicate, copy, or change data.
Similar to the electrification of cars, the Denodo Platform, powered by data virtualization, enables users to “stop collecting and start connecting.” In this way, the Denodo Platform also enables digital transformation at an unprecedented rate, which will be necessary for building the clean energy systems of the future.
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- The European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation: Enabling Data Driven Innovation in Healthcare - October 18, 2024
- Is Data the New Oil? - September 22, 2022
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