The unrelenting growth of unstructured data represents an enormous opportunity for those organizations looking to transform their businesses to win in the new digital economy. While unstructured data is the fuel that can power business success, harnessing it can be a challenge. For example, in many organizations today, data is frequently spread across diverse storage platforms, trapped in infrastructure ‘silos’ dedicated to specific applications, and spread across on-prem storage and various cloud storage platforms. In these environments, IT managers and business users frequently don’t have tools to answer simple questions about their data such as:
- Where is my data? Is it in the cloud or on one of our enterprise storage platforms?
- How can I enable my department to find the data they need on their own?
- How can our teams access our data to collaborate more effectively on projects?
Introducing Dell ClarityNow
Just-released and available globally through Dell and its authorized channel partners, Dell ClarityNow is data management software that enables organizations to locate, access and manage data in seconds, no matter where it resides – across file and object storage, in the data center or in the cloud. With ClarityNow, IT organizations can gain a holistic data view across their storage systems with a single pane of glass, effectively breaking down trapped siloes of data.
For business users and content creators, ClarityNow offers self-service capabilities to find, use and move files to the most appropriate storage tier (e.g. all-flash or archive), with a database that can index billions of files and folders that would otherwise be difficult to access without a consolidated global file system view. For IT administrators, ClarityNow provides an ability to manage storage costs, rapidly locate files and accurately report on the usage of storage infrastructure.
As shown in the diagram above, ClarityNow is a complementary solution to both Dell Isilon Scale-out NAS and Dell ECS Object Storage, and a number of 3rd party and cloud storage platforms. ClarityNow runs on a dedicated server and on clients to locate, access and manage data across file and object storage, on-prem and in the cloud.
Customer use case examples
Organizations in the Life Sciences sector often deal with complex workflows with billions of files across petabytes of heterogeneous storage. One of Dell’s ClarityNow customers, a genetics research company, built a scientific archive which is accessible by many content owners as well as IT. ClarityNow enabled high speed search across storage repositories with a single pane of glass view while the self-service archive allowed researchers, producers, design managers and engineers to manage their own storage costs and workflows, handling access, visibility and control in a single, highly scalable system.
In the Media and Entertainment industry, a large motion picture firm deployed ClarityNow to help producers, service reps and editors to quickly find the files for the jobs they are working on. Since piracy is a big concern for theatrical content, the firm needed a solution that provided visibility into files without full access. ClarityNow enabled visibility into data without compromising security, allowing the firm to pass security audits for suppliers working on confidential movie production projects.
Key capabilities of Dell ClarityNow
- A unified, single pane of glass view gives insight into file and object data in the data center, off-prem and in the cloud
- High speed search and indexing scans to organize files in “look aside” mode
- Self-service allows content owners to move data from high-performance file storage to archives
- Data mobility engine with bi-directional movement across file and object storage
- Purpose-built database supports optimized analytical performance
- Reports show the true cost of dormant and redundant data with chargeback/showback views
- Visibility into files without direct data access ensures data security
Unlock the Value of Your Data Capital
With the ability of ClarityNow to give a consolidated view across heterogeneous file and cloud storage, Dell is offering organizations more powerful tools to help shrink their data center footprint, lower operational costs and bring order to the explosive growth of unstructured data. Ultimately, this is about helping our customers advance their Digital Transformation initiatives with a modern infrastructure foundation to capture and organize massive amounts of data, while accelerating the ability of the business to unlock the value of their data capital.
Find out more about Dell ClarityNow or contact your Dell sales or channel partner representative.
