How important is storage to your business? My name is Ilene Aginsky and I work in the Storage Division. I’m new to this community and I think this is the perfect place to talk about how the explosion of digital data is changing the way businesses and even consumers need to manage this incredible growth.
It seems that storage should be a relatively easy concept however when data is being created at such a rapid pace it starts to get complicated very quickly. Given this complexity, I will reach out to my colleagues here at Intel and ask them to help explain the technology that surrounds the concept of storage.
For my first foray, I have asked my colleague, Gary McCulley, a Product Line Manager for the Storage Division to explain the concept of Cloud in storage. Below, in Gary’s own words, is that explanation.
How I would explain the “Cloud” to my parents
My parents recently asked me how work was going. Being a Product Marketing Engineer at Intel, I tend to give them vague, (yet accurate) feedback, like “oh, it’s going well” or “Intel as a company is doing well”, etc. In other words: “blah, blah, blah”; I tend not to get into the specifics, fearing I would be in long conversation that would span a diverse range of topics, including explaining how Al Gore really didn’t invent the Internet all the way to how the “Cloud” really has very little to do with the weather. But it got me asking myself if I could coherently tell them about important concepts like the “Cloud” and wondering if they would have a better understanding after my explanation.
Gartner Inc. recently forecasted that one-third of consumers' digital content would be stored in the “Cloud” by 2016. It's an interesting statistic that certainly would impress my parents, even though they may not initially understand it.
Aside -- My parents love me and are impressed by most anything I do or say– sort of like Ben Stiller’s parents in Meet the Fockers, who created a shrine in their son’s honor, including his 9th place ribbon. By comparison, my mom has a framed picture of a duck that I painted when I was in 5th grade hanging on their bathroom wall – I earned 2nd place in my 5th grade class of 25 students!
Upon telling my parents the “Cloud” statistic, they would likely ask the following questions:
“OK, what is digital content and what is the “Cloud”?
First, I would give them examples of digital content: pictures of their grand kids taken with a digital camera, email they send and receive songs they listen to on Pandora, videos of puppies on YouTube, and other examples. Then I would tell them why the “Cloud” is important. I would tell them the growth of multiple connected devices, most of which have cameras (my mom’s cell phone even has a camera), has led to a massive increase in digital content that users have created. And all that content has to be stored somewhere. I would tell them that people used to store content on their PCs (and still do), but with all this new digital content, people now like to store their data on social media sites, like Facebook, which offer free storage space for uploading videos and photos for social sharing.
I would explain to them that every time they access anything that isn’t stored in their computer they are engaging the “Cloud” - like when they access their Yahoo! email account, Facebook, Google, or YouTube. Basically, the “Cloud” allows anyone with an Internet connection to access information that is contained in a network of computers and servers (i.e. a data center) located around the world. This makes it easier to share pictures and videos, for example, of their kids and grand kids.
In addition to Facebook , Google, YouTube, and Apple - companies that provide free storage, I would also explain that some of them charge customers (on a monthly basis) to store their data – typically to customers that have a lot of data to store. Companies like those above and like Amazon Web Services, which have locations with server farms, (i.e. data centers), will store data for customers for a monthly service-based subscription.
Side note: while online backup services like Amazon Web Services, Google Drive, and others, are well-known cloud storage providers, their total storage allocated to consumers and "pro-sumers" is still small relative to that maintained by social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.
Anyway, at this point, my parents would be losing interest, but would still act like they are really interested. So I would try and wrap it up by saying the term “Cloud”is really just a metaphor for the cloud-like shape used to represent the Internet’s infrastructure when engineers draw it.
And then I would tell my Mom that I took a picture of my duck picture and uploaded it to Facebook, where she could enjoy it on her smart phone anytime she liked. I would then be told that the picture isn’t that great, and there was a good reason it is displayed in the bathroom...
Gary McCulley is a product line manager in the Data Center and Connected Systems Group at Intel ® Corporation. Prior to joining Intel, Gary held strategic planning and product marketing positions at Broadcom Corporation, Philips Semiconductors, and General Dynamics. He earned a B.S. in Engineering from Arizona State University, an M.S. in Engineering from San Diego State University, and an MBA from the University of Arizona.