Redstor unveils Artificial Intelligence positioning at Gartner event
Redstor has incorporated the future of data and AI-driven commerce into its development cycle

Redstor unveils Artificial Intelligence positioning at Gartner event

Danie Marais, Director of Product Management at global data management SaaS specialist Redstor, says businesses have an opportunity to tap into the evolution of data management and take advantage of solutions that are being developed for AI, Robotics, Machine Learning and the cloud.

Delegates who visited the 2018 Gartner Symposium in Cape Town were guided by Marais and the rest of the Redstor team through the realities of bringing consumer-grade user experience into the boardroom, reducing the cost of data management and applying AI to enhance the value of data.

As a forward-looking software developer, Redstor has incorporated the future of data and AI-driven commerce into its development cycle.

Marais’ presentation covered the entire lifecycle of data, including tiering, relevant cost and predictions as to how this may change in future.

Redstor used the opportunity to emphasise the cost of bringing a consumer-grade user experience in the boardroom and introducing relevant features, based on the perception of having implemented one technology only to have to reinvest in another for long-term retention.

“What is driving this?” asked Maris.

“Well, different people want different access. In a market dogged by cybersecurity threats like ransomware, consumers still want the same user experience at a company that they enjoy in their private capacity.

“Some companies have already started moving toward customer grade user experiences by using things like NetApp where they have replication technologies built in, replicating their data in real time to another storage system, sending snapshots that they can roll back to and instantly fire up when needing a restore. But this comes at a cost and that remains a huge challenge in most boardrooms.”

According to Redstor, few businesses realise they can achieve their data management goals without compromising on agility. Backup, recovery, archiving, migration and DR can be managed through a single web-based control centre, empowering IT departments while reducing costs, simplifying deployment and billing, improving security and compliance and providing borderless visibility of your entire data estate.

Lifecycle of data

Marais also underlined the relevance of the lifecycle of data.

Along with key themes of driving performance while reducing spend, how data tiering impacts cost optimisation and cloud integration, Marais said, for businesses who rely on data, reducing the costs associated with processing and managing can be a quick win.

“We are talking about reducing IT management overheads, storage costs and improving reliability as well as compliance,” he said.

“Business benefit from centralised visibility and improved data accessibility for users.”

Using AI to strengthen data value

Artificial Intelligence is now a pervasive trend in the market. Analytics tools can provide insight where data sits on a network and how it can be managed more efficiently.

Redstor believes AI will bring the ability for technology to investigate data, in all of the different silos it resides in:

  • Working out how important that data is to your business
  • How frequently it’s accessed
  • If it’s high risk data or not
  • Who are the users involved with the data
  • Where it’s being used
  • Making your IT manager’s job two to three times easier by letting data management technology of the future take over the responsibility

Another reality of the data-centric market is that it demands agility to be able to keep up.

“Technology is changing regularly, and the bigger players might struggle to move their direction with legacy code – they are essentially too big to make speedy changes that scale,” added Morais.

“It takes years for them to change their culture, train sales and presales, and bring new technologies to market. The difference that a smaller, focused service provider makes, is that it is positioned at the forefront of innovation. It listens to customer feedback and the business is just the right size to manoeuvre easily while delivering monthly releases to its customers.”

Click below to share this article

Browse our latest issue

Intelligent CIO Africa

View Magazine Archive