Data analytics are driving enterprise growth, but sifting through vast amounts of unstructured data calls for an advanced server technology. Business Connexion’s Sakkie Burger and Kamal Ravjee discuss how an innovative systems model can transform data centre infrastructure.

What does the future of analytics look like? Currently, most analytics occupy the predictive space – using data to allow for improved risk assessment, recognising trends and identifying potential business and sales opportunities.

Prescriptive analytics, the next frontier in analytical capabilities, is just around the corner. Soon, businesses will be able to see what’s coming and react accordingly, as analytics continuously suggest the most effective business options.

This calls for data – lots of data, the vast amount of it unstructured and gruelling to sift through. Gartner predicts business data will grow 650 percent over the next five years. Unfortunately, the processing power of today’s chips is rapidly hitting a ceiling. Processing all of that data is going to require an innovative new approach.

Technologies such as data analytics and cloud are fundamentally changing not only the processing needs of IT infrastructure but also the very way the infrastructure is designed. The open systems model that dominates current data centre environments is ill-equipped to perform analytics on such large amounts of data, but a new generation of microprocessors may just provide the answer.

Business Connexion believes in taking action today to meet tomorrow’s challenges. In exploring how we could future-proof our servers to enable the continuous growth of system agility, we turned to IBM’s Power Systems.

IBM Power Systems is a significant leap forward among server technology. It combines an open source platform with innovative utilisation and scaling capabilities that are designed to deliver better application mobility, improved scalability, increased virtualisation performance and less downtime.

Openness fuels collaboration, which is one of the main building blocks of innovation. The open server ecosystem of IBM Power Systems brings the power of collaboration to an infrastructure environment, by providing a transformative platform upon which communities can work together to solve the pressing challenges around cloud and big data.

Power Systems have been developed with cloud and analytical capabilities already inbuilt. The infrastructure allows for simplified cloud management solutions that can be accessed through a single point of control. This gives us the flexibility to meet all our client needs, no matter how difficult or unexpected.

One important aspect we considered when choosing IBM Power Systems was the cost-effectiveness of such an infrastructure. According to our client feedback, better performance is only part of the puzzle – this must come at a realistic price-point that allows for ROI on advanced cloud and data analytics capabilities.

There was no comparison. IBM Power Systems represented a significant cost saving for a huge enhancement on performance. This allows us to drive our most complex, mission-critical processes and applications while still delivering cost savings for our clients.

Implementing the latest Power Systems in our environment is more than just an upgrade of our systems. It’s symbolic of a paradigm shift in how we approach and enable our clients to handle the imposing workloads that tomorrow’s advanced cloud and data analytics strategies will require.

For more on how server infrastructure is adapting to meet the challenges of the evolving cloud and data analytics landscape, register for our even taking place 12 March in Johannesburg and 17 March in Cape Town. More info here Intelligence in the Moment Event