How Rackspace Object Storage Solves Your Multicloud Unstructured Data Storage Challenges

If there’s one absolute truth in today’s digital age, it’s that more and more data is being generated and needs to be securely stored. During 2022, organizations created 97 zettabytes of data and are expected to create 180 zettabytes a year by 2025, according to Statista. Roughly 80% of this data is thought to be unstructured data — that means, for example, images, emails, videos and social media posts.

It’s not surprising that 95% of businesses cite managing unstructured data as a major concern, according to a Forbes big data survey. Some of the problems companies are encountering are the inability to process the rapidly growing data volume, accessing data that has become siloed, ensuring regulatory compliance of all data, dermining the usability of data, and maintaining data privacy, compliance and security.

Challenges in managing unstructured data

Data storage and retrieval can be a challenge for businesses operating in multicloud environments. For example, privacy and security can become more difficult to guarantee and integrating data sets stored in separate clouds can be difficult.

Also, without the right controls and processes in place, data silos can become hinderances to business demands in multicloud environments. For one thing, depending on the level of service subscribed to, there can be a significant delay between requesting and receiving a data transfer.

Along with the challenges of managing unstructured data are rising storage costs. This includes the sometimes-exorbitant transit fees some cloud providers charge when you move data between multiple clouds. This often leads companies to reduce access and, therefore, reduce business opportunities.

Another challenge is today’s shortage of skilled engineers, including storage experts. While data storage requirements are growing and becoming more complex, businesses are struggling to find the skilled resources they need to manage and maintain their expanding data repositories.

When considered alongside a general business desire for evermore insight from business data, these are issues that organizations need to get resolved.

Rackspace Object Storage provides an ideal solution

Overcoming the many challenges of managing today’s increasing volume of unstructured data is of vital concern to many organizations for several reasons, in particular, to extract valuable business insight. But unless they can find an affordable way to store and manage the data, companies access is constrained.

Rackspace Object Storage is purpose built to provide an ideal solution. It’s a fully managed data storage service that gives organizations an easy and affordable way to store, secure and access large quantities of unstructured data. It provides everything a company needs, including scalable multi-tiered S3 object storage in our globally distributed data centers. This means your data will be actionable from anywhere, anytime.

Other advantages organizations can gain from Rackspace Object Storage, include:

• Handles any type of unstructured data
• Offers reduced storage complexity
• Supports data searchability
• Scales far beyond other storage options
• Can be distributed across multiple locations
• Offers similar access times to any object

With multicloud IT architectures, Rackspace Object Storage offers several additional advantages. It eliminates data silos in competing clouds with a logical centralized repository. This can ease data residency and sovereignty assurance and make compliance easier to confirm.

When combined with RackConnect® Global, the Rackspace Technology® global private fiber network, managed by a team of expert network engineers, organizations gain significantly reduced data transit costs, while gaining the freedom to leverage advanced applications and toolsets on any cloud, for example, AI. Lower costs and increased data access are provided by Rackspace Data Freedom, which enables organizations to connect their object storage estates directly to the hyperscalers’ onramps.

Solving multicloud unstructured data storage challenges

By creating a centralized object data repository, businesses can ensure that their data flows rapidly between clouds in their multicloud environment — with lower data egress or retrieval charge. And with encryption built into the fixed subscription, businesses are assured of no billing surprises.

Rackspace Object Storage also addresses an organization’s skill shortage. Our team of expert storage architects and engineers provide ongoing administration, provisioning, maintenance, patching, upgrading and troubleshooting to the storage devices, regardless of who manages the compute, which may be adjacent in the private cloud or in a hyperscaler public cloud.

Rackspace Object Storage solutions are ideal for businesses looking to isolate their data from public clouds. They may have experienced “bill shock” after moving data between different clouds and need to find an alternate data storage arrangement. But they still want to use the advanced applications and toolsets offered by other public clouds that they are not yet connected to. Rackspace Object Storage with RackConnect Global fulfills this dream.

Rackspace Object Storage solutions also address the need for instantly retrievable archives, because there is no price tiering related to the frequency of data retrieval requests, which is a significant cost consideration with public clouds.

What’s more, while storing in public cloud seems attractive at first, the escalating costs of doing so and subsequently retrieving it when required are causing many to seek alternate solutions. Cloud adjacent storage such Rackspace Object Storage can address this and many other concerns that businesses have regarding how and where they store and subsequently process their data.

They will be able to leverage the Rackspace Technology network infrastructure as well as our data centers for object storage repository. Further, Rackspace Data Freedom will dramatically reduce data access costs and broaden multicloud compute options.

Rackspace Object Storage solutions solve your multicloud unstructured data storage challenges with a central repository accessible from any public or private cloud services, thereby, eliminating data silos and simplifying security, privacy and compliance.