Page 18 - Federal Computer Week, May/June 2019

IT Modernization
Transforming
data into value
The growing focus on data capital is a catalyst for key modernization technologies
Ed Krejcik
Manager of Isilon Systems Engineers, Dell EMC
2. Big data. Being able to combine data from different areas of the government
is transformational. In the case of IT, for instance, analyzing logs from a variety
of machines can support intelligence- based security as new correlations reveal vulnerabilities that weren’t visible before.
3. Internet of things. Agencies are generating so much data that it’s difficult to keep up. As sensors are being added to just about everything from cars to refrigerators, the photo and video data streaming from those sensors is increasing in resolution
ONE OF THE biggest trends in digital transformation is the shift from simply storing data to
converting it into intelligent and actionable insights. When raw data is interpreted into meaningful information, it becomes data capital.
Agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Social Security Administration and the
IRS are already mining their own data to gain important insights into the economy, population movement and the effectiveness of government programs.
Exploring new combinations
of data
Unstructured data typically accounts for more than 80 percent of storage capacity, and that data continues to grow at an exponential rate.
Pooling unstructured data — such as digital images, video and sensor data — into a unified data lake makes it possible to analyze disparate types of information and derive new business intelligence through cross-correlations and regression analysis.
To make sense of all that data, agencies need the ability to scale out (rather than up) quickly. Unlike the appliance model, which involves adding another piece of hardware when the infrastructure hits a certain
limit, scale-out solutions feature clusters of nodes, and each node can have compute, networking and storage resources. When an agency needs more capacity, it simply adds more nodes.
Such platforms scale quickly and easily, and they typically support both traditional and evolving protocols, such as cloud and mobile technology.
Beyond traditional analytics
At Dell EMC, we’ve identified four important areas where data capital is driving modernization:
1. The digital experience. Employees need up-to-date intelligence at a moment’s notice, no matter how geographically dispersed they are. For instance, two employees might need access to the same data, but one sits
at an agency workstation while another is using a mobile device in the field. Deployed warfighters in particular require fast, easy access to information and intelligence.
davooda/Shutterstock/FCW Staff
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