The future of infrastructure design: data-centric architecture

According to a survey conducted by MIT Technology Review and commissioned by Pure Storage, an overwhelming 86 percent of leaders say data is the foundation for making business decisions, while 87 percent say it’s key to delivering results for customers. Data-centric architecture keeps data and applications in place while technology is built around it, and fundamentally transforms data center design with the data as its core element.

“Our customers aggressively seek to use data to improve their customer experience and outdistance their competition,” said Charles Giancarlo, CEO, Pure Storage. “The unprecedented explosion of data coupled with new data center technologies enables Pure customers to build a data-centric architecture that enhances and simplifies their ability to use data for intelligence and advantage.”

Enhancements to Pure Platform Bring NVMe, AI to Mainstream

To help organizations unlock value from their data and leverage new technologies to build competitive advantage, Pure unveiled a host of new data-centric solutions for enterprises at every stage of their lifecycle:

• The new FlashArray//X product line is the first family of all-flash arrays purpose-built for Shared Accelerated Storage. The all-NVMe FlashArray//X family makes everything faster – databases, virtualized environments, test/dev initiatives and web-scale applications – at no additional cost. The line features five configurations to bring NVMe to all – from the NVMe-ready //X10 and //X20 to the all-NVMe //X50, //X70, and //X90, Pure’s densest, fastest array to-date.
• AIRI^TM Mini, powered by NVIDIA, the leader in accelerated computing for AI, expands Pure’s AI-Ready Infrastructure offerings. Built on FlashBlade^TM, AIRI is designed to enable data architects, scientists and business leaders to extend the power of the NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputer and operationalize learning early in their AI lifecycle. AIRI Mini enables new data science teams and new projects to get up and running quickly with world-class infrastructure purpose-built for the challenges of AI. With AIRI Mini, organizations can implement a simple, powerful solution to build competitive advantage through AI at a price point that’s accessible for virtually any enterprise.

• With the industry-first Evergreen Storage Service (ES2) customers can leverage a cloud-like consumption model, powered by FlashArray, for on-premises storage. Additional new benefits of the Evergreen^TM Storage program simplify capacity requirements and can extend Pure’s existing Right-Size Guarantee with every capacity expansion.      

MIT Tech Review Survey: AI Unlocks Intelligence Within Data

Pure also announced full results of the MIT Technology Review survey. The data, gathered from more than 2,300 business leaders across the globe, explores the vast potential – and challenges – businesses must address to unlock data intelligence with AI.                          

AI represents an unprecedented opportunity for organizations to improve operations, deliver better customer experiences, and drive business performance through data-driven initiatives. Yet concerns still exist about adoption of AI including cost, data infrastructure, talent resources and ethics.

According to the new survey from MIT Tech Review:

• 82% of business and IT leaders believe AI will have a positive impact
• 83% believe AI is important for analytics, greater efficiency and reducing human error
• More than 80% foresee increased creative and strategic customer-focus for the business
• 79% say there are legal and ethical implications of AI that still need to be clarified

Yet, most agree there is not enough time and resources devoted to mining data intelligence:

• 78% say they face challenges in digesting, analyzing and interpreting large volumes of data
• 79% say ensuring the business is using relevant data sources is a challenge

• 81% say analyzing even more data at greater speeds is a big future challenge