What’s driving the need for more and better storage technologies? The phenomenon known as big data—terabytes, even petabytes of data are collected, analyzed, and used in new applications.

Federal data centers are filling up with data as terabytes accumulate into petabytes. Agencies must adapt their storage architectures and policies to optimize it all.

At $78.9 billion, the federal government’s proposed IT budget for fiscal year 2013 is 0.7% less than the current budget. That’s four years in a row that the federal IT budget has been flat, but there’s been no letup in the growth of data or the need to store it. During this same period, the feds’ data storage requirements have been growing 30% to 40% a year, gobbling up scarce IT funding.

As government IT teams look for ways to build out their storage infrastructures in support of big data projects and the burgeoning databases that are part of their everyday operations, they must pick the right platforms. Agencies are deploying multiple tools and developing a federated approach to governance.

Policies must define the types of data that will be stored, for how long, how quickly data needs to be accessed, and how. These policies will form the basis of storage governance and help define technology requirements. Without this foundation, you’ll end up with underutilized technology, be throwing dollars at problems, and find it difficult to accommodate growth.

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