Organizations that produce massive amounts of unstructured data face access, storage and security problems that can seem monstrous. But just as feral beasts can be caged, large-scale file data can be protected, organized and leveraged.

“The growth of unstructured data is unbounded … will continue to be unbounded and will break traditional architectural paradigms,” according to Kevin Kotecki (pictured), vice president of sales at Igneous Systems Inc. Igneous specializes in solutions for machine and application-generated data at scale, helping customers in such diverse fields as engineering, media and entertainment, legal services, proprietary trading, and bioinformatics turn their unstructured data from liability to resource.

Speaking with Stu Miniman (@Stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VTUG Winter Warmer event in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Kotecki explained the process by which Igneous helps its clients solve difficult data problems. (* Disclosure below.)

“[We] start with data protection day one. It’s a great way to help customers get insight into their full suite of unstructured file data,” he said.

The next step is building an extensible index that powers other services, like archive and end-user search and restore. The index also feeds into a policy engine that helps customers tier data to the public cloud, specifically to cost-appropriate cloud storage products like Amazon Glacier and Azure Archive.

Saying goodbye to low latency

Organizational dynamics traditionally have three separately owned aspects: application, storage, and back-up and disaster management, according to Kotecki. In theory, these aspects should operate without impacting one another, but in real life backups can cause application latency, frustrating the end-user and resulting in a terse call to the information technology department.

Once a company has entrusted its data to Igneous, however, it receives continuous and automated protection, removing any chance of low latency and allowing its data production team to focus on higher order priorities than managing a backup.

“The end users no longer complain, and therefore their daily interaction with IT … is not around IT impacting their ability to do their job,” Kotecki stated.

One of Igneous’ customers is a bioinformatics organization specializing in 3D digital microscope technology. Its intensive research operations produce petabyte scale data, even after processing. Igneous minimized costs around implementing primary storage and data protection with automated deployment that required minimal oversight from the in-house IT department. The organization then leveraged Igneous to tier to the cloud, safely opening its data for access by collaborating researchers, and to meet grant requirements to provide data in a publicly available, downloadable format.

Kotecki appreciates working with such demanding clients: “[Having the] end-to-end ability to provide a solution for customers that have unique challenges in creating large-scale file data has been really satisfying,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer. (* Disclosure: Igneous Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Igneous Systems nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE