Automated information management in cloud storage environments with EMC Atmos
EMC announced its first cloud infrastructure offering, EMC Atmos, the first multi-petabyte information management solution designed to help customers automatically manage and optimize the distribution of rich, unstructured information across global, cloud storage environments. It enables Web 2.0 and Internet providers, telecommunications, media and entertainment companies to securely build and deliver cloud-based information-centric services and applications at massive scale by providing the capabilities of centralized management and automated placement of information globally.
Content-rich Web 2.0 applications such as video and photo sharing services combined with the growth of user-generated content on the Web is creating billions of new objects in the form of documents, videos, digital images and music. This combination of massive growth, new information types, and the need to serve hundreds of locations and millions of users around the world has led to new market requirements for information management at a global scale. These market requirements have led to the rise of cloud optimized storage (COS), a term used to describe current and future global-scale information management architectures.
A key differentiator of EMC Atmos is the ability to define policies that determine how information is distributed and handled on a global basis. For example, information that is current and valuable may be defined as “premium” and therefore require more copies in more locations than information that is older and accessed less frequently. The older information may be compressed and retained with fewer copies in fewer locations.
Additional services such as compression and de-duplication are built into EMC Atmos, as are multi-tenant and Web service API features. For instance, a service provider using EMC Atmos can build applications that offer secure online services, “pay-for-use” and other models. Additionally, media and entertainment companies can use these same features for global distribution, management and retention of digital media assets. EMC Atmos is providing these types of customers with low total cost of ownership — at petabyte scale — in a cloud environment, which is a compelling requirement and competitive advantage as they provide and deliver services to customers.