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Hidden Champions: Behind These Popular Applications Are Hard Drives

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Written by Rainer W. Kaese, Senior Manager of Business Development Storage Products at Toshiba Electronics Europe

So, the digital age has nothing to do with hard drives anymore? Whoever believes that is mistaken. Even if the hard drive is not the first thing that comes to mind for many people when it comes to digital applications, that does not mean that they have no points of contact with classical memory – quite the opposite. In fact, they probably use digital services that depend on hard drives daily: No other storage medium that allows direct access provides such high storage capacities at such low costs. Toshiba names five popular applications of the digital age in which the hard drive plays a crucial role in the background:

Video Streaming: Streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, and similar, as well as the multimedia libraries of TV channels or YouTube, hold thousands of videos, often in high resolution, that require an enormous amount of storage capacity. For cost reasons, these volumes of data in the petabyte range can only be stored on hard drives; otherwise, the providers would not be able to refinance the services. This is particularly the case because the videos are not only stored on a central system but copies are also stored on systems in different regions to enable users in any part of the world to access them quickly.

Online Shopping: It is not just at Christmas or Easter time that online shopping is enjoying ever-increasing popularity. However, countless images, product descriptions and product data require plenty of storage capacity, ideally costing as little as possible so as not to further reduce the tight margins in many retail sectors. This is why the bulk of the data is stored on hard drives. Only certain types of temporary data required for quick purchase transactions, such as the shopping cart and payment information, are temporarily stored on all-flash-based storage.

Map Services: Anyone can go travelling digitally today. With their zoom functions, Google Maps and similar opens up highly detailed views of every corner of the world. In large cities, views of the buildings are also available for many streets – older images are even available in some cases, meaning that users can even take a trip back in time for several years. The numerous satellite images, aerial photos and photos of streets require an enormous volume of storage capacity and are therefore held on hard drives in cloud data centres. Google even receives aerial images from government authorities, research institutes and commercial suppliers on hard drives.

Online Memories: Cloud-based memory services such as Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive are practical for backing up important data or synchronising it across multiple devices. Practically all cloud services store large volumes of data on hard drives at low cost. Special software-defined architectures are used here: These combine a large number of drives in storage pools, delivering much higher performance than individual drives and handling a large number of simultaneous read and write access operations by users and devices.

Social Media Networks: More than five billion people use social media networks, and the figure is increasing daily. The number of photos, videos and audio files uploaded 24/7 seems almost incomprehensible. For Instagram alone the figure is over 1,000 photos per second, and for YouTube more than 500 hours of video material per minute. The network operators would not be able to cope with these volumes of data without hard drives.

Wherever large volumes need to be stored at low cost while being accessed online, there is no alternative to hard drives – regardless of whether it be popular consumer services such as video streaming, modern enterprise applications for ERP and CRM, or digitally monitored and controlled production systems. Whereas many people use smartphones and tablets on a private basis, hard drives – except NAS systems in the home – are now mainly used in data centres, where they bear the main burden of data processing in the digital age. This is why millions of drives continue to be sold year after year, which will remain unchanged over the coming years.

Expert Speak

Shadow IT – Is It Really a Problem?

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Personally, I love shadow IT—most employees do. But is it a problem? Let’s explore.

Wondering what shadow IT is? Shadow IT refers to the use of software and hardware tools or services by employees without the knowledge of the organization’s IT department.

The use of shadow IT tools has been a topic of discussion for years, with each company having its stance. Using these tools is often more about personal preference than anything else, and the same applies to how companies handle them. Most people lean toward shadow IT because official IT software tools often do not offer features that cater to individual preferences.

Some commonly used tools that fall under shadow IT include project management tools like Trello and Notion, messenger apps like WhatsApp, and file transfer apps like WeTransfer and Dropbox. The common factor? They’re all easy to access and use. However, with the rise of GenAI, everyone’s new shadow IT tool is ChatGPT.

The problems
I’m sure you already know the main issues that make companies dislike shadow IT tools: privacy and security.

Let’s look at ChatGPT. The use of ChatGPT isn’t regulated in most organizations, and many companies are still at a crossroads regarding GenAI tools. There’s a risk of employees unintentionally sharing sensitive information, leading to data leaks. This could include intellectual property, like code used to build applications, or personal information such as phone number, email address, house address, and more.

Whatever the sensitive information may be, it’s not safe to share it with tools like ChatGPT. Threat actors are constantly trying to breach systems, especially widely used tools like ChatGPT, where there’s much to gain. There’s still an obvious vulnerability here despite companies providing best practices to employees.

Another problem with shadow IT tools is that they restrict collaboration. If one team member uses a cool, new project management app to track progress and others use a different tool, it’s difficult to stay on the same page. For example, design and development teams often work together on the same project, such as designing web pages.

If the design team uses one project management tool and the development team another, how can they collaborate and work in sync to meet deadlines? It creates unnecessary friction. This is why organizations provide the same, approved project management tools for everyone. While using different tools might boost individual productivity, it can cause productivity issues within the project as a whole.

From a financial standpoint, companies pay for business tools that their employees use. If employees start using free online tools instead, the money spent on approved tools for a user who uses a shadow IT tool instead becomes a loss for the company.

Additionally, when organizations approve software solutions, those tools are vetted by a team of professionals and comply with the laws and regulations that the company must follow. However, we can’t be sure those tools are compliant when employees download apps on an ad-hoc basis, and employees usually don’t check for these things when they download or use shadow IT apps.

The good
Shadow IT tools are awesome. We all agree on that. The tools organizations give us, or approve, are often outdated. They’ve been around in the tech landscape for years (for good reasons, of course), but as technology advances, we don’t want to be tied to old tools that lack new features, which could make our work easier.

Restricting access to apps doesn’t feel great. We all work differently and have unique preferences. Using shadow IT tools that we like makes us feel more productive, and empowered, and allows for individuality in the workplace. When we use tools we love, we tend to be more efficient compared to when we’re stuck using approved, traditional tools that may lack the features we need.

The verdict
Shadow IT comes with many advantages, and dismissing it solely because of the risks isn’t wise. If we think about it, all tools carry some degree of risk. It’s up to us to be educated and understand how to use them securely and efficiently while benefiting the team and the company we work for. Shadow IT tools might benefit you individually, but what’s more important is to look at the bigger picture and ensure that your teamwork doesn’t get affected because of this.

Speaking of the financial loss that a company incurs while giving out tools that an employee may not need, what can be done instead is that organizations can avoid giving all the tools that an employee might need. Even if it’s a tool that employees may need regularly, us a request-based system so that employees reach out to get a paid tool by the company only if they need it and want to use it. This eliminates the unnecessary cost incurred by the company when an employee is provided with paid tools by default but chooses to use a shadow IT tool instead.

At first glance, shadow IT might seem like a problem, but with employee education and empowerment, it doesn’t have to be. Restricting shadow IT tools is easy, but educating employees is key.

ManageEngine is a company that believes in employee-driven innovation and encourages its employees to be aware of secure cybersecurity practices while allowing room for individuality. To learn more about ManageEngine and its offerings that allow you to have a secure and efficient IT infrastructure, click here.

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Cyber Security

How to Decrease the Burden of Authentication Requirements

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Written by Roman Cuprik, Content Writer at ESET (more…)

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Cyber Security

Skills Gap Exposes Organisations to Risks

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Written by Rob Rashotte, Vice President, Global Training & Technical Field Enablement at Fortinet (more…)

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