Many of the problems organizations face today are related to data. Most organizations have too much data, which is growing too quickly, and which is siloed and difficult to consolidate. These challenges create an “insight gap,” where organizations are not able to adequately analyze their data and thus capitalize on its value. Traditional methods of data analysis are not sufficient for many petabyte-scale organizations. However, the promise of self-optimizing analytics powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning offers a path forward, but many organizations don’t know where to get started.

To help, IBM has developed a vision for organizations: to implement hybrid multicloud-enabled storage infrastructure that modernizes traditional workloads and is optimized to run next-generation workloads, enabling them to operate as dynamic ‘data-driven’ enterprises. The collection of characteristics that determine whether an organization has achieved this vision are collectively referred to as Storage Maturity in this report.