Impact of Data Storage on Technology - Essay Example

Data Storage Usage Data Storage and Retrieval are just two of the essential, distinctive capabilities that give “power” to a computer in terms of usability. The greater the volume of data a computer can store and retrieve, the more “information power” it can bring to the user. Why the preference for electronic data storage? It has several advantages as presented by J. Husin, as follows: “1) search and retrieval speed; 2) flexibility in handling and manipulating data level. Here, there is a need for consistency and forced harmony of data to enable data search; 3) archiving advantage.

This means that even after 20 years old a database with billions of records as long as it has been properly designed and maintained, will still search rapidly and return results fast whereas doing it manually, each growing record slows down to the end point of the search; and finally, 4) with the electronic database you can always build it up, redesign or customize database, etc. to meet your data requirements” (Husin, 2008). Impact of Data Storage on TechnologyPresently, IT CEOs, CIOs, and administrators deal with the increasing explosion of data growth.

Thanks to modern science that is keeping up with the rapid pace of development in the industry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). New enhanced features on data storage technology have been added to include backup, archiving, and disaster recovery built-in mechanisms to protect stored data and these are milestone achievements. Another featured enhancement is, increasing data storage capacity to accommodate a greater volume of data of any format. Second, if only digitized data can be stored in a computer, today, all data formats from text messages, images, sound, voice, pictures, scanned data, music, and movies, among others are now accepted for storage, retrieval, manipulation, and sharing.

More and more enhanced features will be introduced since the number of different types of computer users has increased immensely in keeping pace with service requirements and ICT developments. The different types of new computer users include data miners, explorers, departmental users, multidimensional users, power users, and executive users. This situation requires alternate storage mechanisms to respond to the needs of the industries. In response to the demands of these varied types of computer users, new hybrid storage systems are now introduced: direct attached storage (DAS), storage area network (SAN), and network attached storage (NAS) (“Enterprise Data Storage”, n. d.).

Enterprise business storage is also one of the popular new storage systems that play a special key role in ensuring that enterprise business intelligence is available and has leverage at the most opportune time and that discrete data silos are consolidated to provide an enterprise business intelligence infrastructure (“Enterprise Data Storage”, n. d.). It also enables data sharing through connectivity to various computers in a network environment (“Enterprise Data Storage”, n. d.). These developments are further enhanced with data de-duplication technology which improves the data protection capabilities of computers (“Data De-Duplication Technology”, n. d.).

More IT innovations are most likely to be discovered in view of the growing demand for better performance of services. Impact of Data Storage on the Economy The considerable impact of data Storage on the economy cannot be solely isolated since data storage is just part of the entire multifunctional system of a computer. On the other hand, if taken in the holistic context of Information Technology, it can most likely have a substantial impact on economic growth in the coming decades. Cohen explains that “the reason for this is that the use of IT by nearly all industries in the economy’s base so that IT becomes a universal input to nearly all other outputs.

If IT costs decline, they can create substantial economic gains from many industries that use IT, because money spent on IT can be invested in other inputs and improvements in production or services. Furthermore, because the business relies upon IT to do a wide range of tasks including competitive advantage, by facilitating these tasks for end users, important gains are achieved that are difficult to measure in a classic input-output framework. In addition, IT, viewed in a larger context, should have even wider impacts on the economy, because new channels of communications, such as the Internet, cellular television, and broadband applications, will provide businesses with new channels to reach customers and suppliers” (Cohen, 1995).