Unless something is entirely weightless it has the potential to be pulled earthward by gravity, and the term is used figuratively for data when used in a discussion of data gravity. As you likely know from being here we do like to talk about data in our blog, and given the fact that 4GoodHosting is a Canadian web hosting provider that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. But anyone and everyone who’s operating in the digital space has more demands than ever before when it comes to managing and warehousing data, and so if you’re not familiar with data gravity that’s where we’ll start this week. The clinical definition for data gravity is to say that is the ‘propensity for bodies of data to draw an expanding swath of applications and services into closer proximity’. It affects an enterprise's ability to innovate, secure customer experiences, and even deliver financial results on a global scale. As such it’s an issue that major businesses will have to deal with if they’re going to continue to have the same benchmarks for themselves operating their business in the way they have for likely more than 2 decades now. If not longer. No one anywhere is taking their foot off the gas even a bit with making progress, so data storage and management challenges continue to be magnified. Data gravity is certainly one of them, so let’s look at it in more detail with this week’s entry. Heavy Sets When data piles up, applications and services are always going to move closer to the data sets and this data gravity at work. It’s already been identified as a key megatrend for certain industries, and the prominence of it is foreseen to double in the next couple of years. It may mean problems down the road with some organizations and their IT infrastructure. Data should be openly available to access by its related applications and services, easily managed, analyzed, and activated regardless of location. In order for that to happen traffic must flow easily everywhere across a company’s network footprint and including – among other point-to-points - from the public internet to every private...
