Businesses are struggling with the deluge of data flooding their systems and need to find an effective solution for managing it. Adding to the challenge is the amount of old and inactive data that must be kept for legal and/or legacy reasons. Many organisations are still using expensive primary storage systems for their old data which eats up vast amounts of their annual IT budget. The time and effort needed for IT teams to manage overloaded and expensive traditional storage solutions is an unnecessary waste of valuable resource.
So what should you do with all those terabytes of data?
Things to consider when making decisions about storage management are:
Data Storage Solutions Vary With Business Size
Only 20% of businesses store a petabyte or more of data while 40% of businesses have less than 50 terabytes of data. Recognising this, most IT managers and business owners consider that, if they are in the SMB sector, an enterprise storage solution would be an overkill. In reality the best solution for them is likely to be based on enterprise technology but tailored to fit their data storage requirements.
Tape Storage Is Not The Answer
Tape storage is still being used by many organisations who believe this is a cheap option however, in reality it is very demanding in management, highly unreliable and when needed, rarely leads to complete recovery of data.
How Important Is All That Data?
Studies have shown that almost 60% of data stored is old or inactive and is unlikely to be used ever again. Therefore, considering the cost of storage, it would be financially worthwhile to invest time in cleansing this data and weeding out duplicated or obsolete information.
Public Cloud Storage Can Be Risky
Studies suggest that many businesses have suffered unauthorised cloud access using storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive. This is often caused by individual employees using the cloud to store their data without the security precautions of a corporate storage solution. Most organisations do not adequately consider the implications of what measures their service provider has made to enable recovery of customer data in the event of a system failure – or worse, if their service provider goes out of business altogether.
Storage Will Remain A Business Challenge
It is apparent that business data will continue to grow at a rapid rate and therefore storage management is always going to be an important consideration. By being proactive about creating long-term solutions, organisations can save time and money, which is better invested in developing their core business.
It is important to evaluate the overall needs of the business when deciding which way to go in enterprise data storage. Price, technology, SLAs, disaster recovery, security and compliance are only a few of the factors that must be considered.
DSM Group have experts on hand to discuss your specific storage requirements and help you to find the best solution for your business.