MAKING THE MOST OF DATA: THE SEAGATE CHALLENGE
Data has emerged as one of the world’s most valuable commodities — “the new oil”, as pundits have put it. But the deluge of information is of no value unless it can be properly managed and applied.
Thanks to technological advancement, data collection, management and utilisation have become vastly more affordable and efficient. Staggering amounts of data can now be stored, analysed and incorporated to optimise processes and operations at all levels — from households to giant corporations.
“Data for enterprises and in people’s lives has become much more life-centric and life-critical, permeating various aspects of our lives. How people interact, how government thinks and how businesses use data have changed dramatically and will continue to change hugely in the next five years,” said Jeffrey Nygaard, executive vice-president for global operations of Seagate Technology Ltd, during an interview with Asia Focus.
How quickly and efficiently data can be used will become a huge factor in the success of businesses, he said. Data analytics now allows businesses to make decisions based on massive amounts of data real time, which can instantly affect how they operate.
According to Data Age 2025, a white paper by the research firm IDC, the total amount of data worldwide will swell to 163 Zettabytes (one zettabyte is a billion terabytes) by 2025, or 10 times the amount today, most of it created and managed by enterprises.
Seagate CEO Steve Luczo noted earlier that global business leaders and entrepreneurs must sharpen their focus on data to become successful in creating global business impacts.
“What is really exciting are the analytics, the new businesses, the new thinking and new ecosystems from industries like robotics and machine-to-machine learning, and their profound social and economic impact on our society,” he said.
“The opportunity for today’s enterprises and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to capture the value of data is tremendous, and our global business leaders will be exploring these opportunities for decades to come.”
BUILDING THE EDGE
Given the scale of the challenge, there is a critical need for information technology (IT) infrastructure to evolve in order to support the huge amount of data that requires to be stored, moved and accessed promptly, according to Mr Nygaard.
“People have that expectation of instant response. Businesses also have this expectation of instant response. The speed element is very critical,” he said.
In order to move and access the data quickly, three elements must be established in the IT ecosystem. Two of them — the endpoints where the data is created and consumed and the cloud where it is stored — already exist. The third element, known as edge computing, has emerged as the critical enabler in the IT equation to accelerate this digital transformation.
IDC defines edge computing as a “mesh network of micro data centres that process or store critical data locally and push all received data to a central data centre or cloud storage repository, in a footprint of less than 100 square feet”.
Basically, edge computing devices that reside away from the centralised computing in the cloud allow data to be processed closer to where it is created and reduce the backhaul traffic to the centralised repository in the cloud.
“There’s going to be micro-clouds closer to the endpoint so users can get to the data access immediately over time,” said Mr Nygaard, who is responsible for Seagate’s global operations and also currently serves as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand.
“So how do we create that IT infrastructure to do that? There’s a lot of investment and forethought required strategically,” he said.
The current challenge, according to Mr Nygaard, is that all stakeholders have to work together to discuss and agree on the solution that will work in this ecosystem.
“We need to be engaged with customers, government and consortiums on how those ecosystems will look . … As a business and as a citizen, it is critical for governments to have a common framework on things around data.
“The problem is that if every country goes down its own path, it will not be as efficient. It could also slow the growth towards Internet 4.0 or the digital lifestyle if every country goes in its own direction. There is not yet a consortium at the global level yet.”
Another critical challenge, he said, is the shift in human resources skills and capability in the workplace. “Five to ten years from now, the skills required for jobs will be very different, so how do you re-skill people for the future?”
That means it will be critical to work with governments to develop the skills of people now in school so they will be equipped to support the new digital ecosystem once they become part of the labour market.
Founded in 1979, California-based Seagate is the global leader in data storage solutions and one of the world’s largest hard-disk drive (HDD) producers. For the fiscal year ended June 29, 2018, it reported revenue of US$11.2 billion and net income of $1.2 billion.
Its Thailand operation was established in 1983 with two facilities in Theparak, Samut Prakan, and the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima built in 1988 and 1996, respectively and employing close to 20,000 workers.
MORE BANG FOR THE BYTE
According to Mr Nygaard, Seagate invests about US$1 billion annually in research and development (R&D) to get more bytes into storage devices and increase performance so that data moves in and out faster.
One of its key investments now is in heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), a technology designed to enable a huge increase in the amount of data that can be stored on a hard drive. This is made possible by media coating on each disk that allows data bits to become smaller and more densely packed while remaining magnetically stable.
Another area of investment is MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology, which has enabled Seagate to set a new hard drive speed record, demonstrating up to 480MB/s sustained throughput.
“It is a huge jump in performance which increases our throughput 60% over the fastest drive we have now,” he said.
Since mid-2016, Seagate has been carrying out a global business restructuring and cost-cutting plan. Early last year, it closed a factory in Suzhou, China, cutting 2,000 jobs, leaving its two vertically integrated HDD production facilities in Wuxi, China, and Nakhon Ratchasima.