At least every few years, utility companies release squadrons of drones into the skies to digitally photograph hard-to-reach equipment and check for wear and tear. Around the world, there are 3 million miles of high-voltage transmission lines – enough to go from the moon and back half-a-dozen times – and as much as 64 million miles of local transmission lines; that represents a lot of images, and even more data.

Hitachi Vantara recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study to examine the value that customers could achieve using cloud and application modernization services from Hitachi Vantara. To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four decision-makers at companies with experience using cloud and app modernization services from Hitachi Vantara.

The idea of running compute and storing data in the cloud is no longer a novel concept. With the evolution of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), this brings along the next evolution of edge storage demands. Today, around 10% of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud. By 2025, Gartner predicts this figure will reach 75%.