The growing amount of data in digital format companies deal with on a daily basis has made the storage and information management market one of the most important - as well as one of the most lucrative in the world.
Yet, as more vendors enter the market with solutions concerning where to put data, businesses are starting to demand solutions that will help them consolidate and get a grip on their data without constantly having to spend more money on new hardware.
Meta Group estimates that 12% to 15% of a company`s IT budget is spent on storage solutions - excluding salaries. This may not seem a large amount of money, but this equates to about R20 million annually for a company with R1 billion in revenues.
Unfortunately, that price only reflects the costs of storage hardware and software. Looking at the big picture, it becomes apparent that the real price tag is far larger and increases in accordance with the amount of data stored.
If a company were to analyse its data carefully and reduce it to one-third its size, the cost of managing the information would also be reduced.
Paul Mullon, Marketing director, Metrofile
Once the technology is paid for, companies need to add in the cost of annual maintenance, which includes preventative maintenance as well as paying people with the skills to manage the products effectively. Additional funding is also required to cover the cost of searching and finding information. Retrieval is a vital aspect of storage: information is useless if it can`t be found and retrieved when necessary.
What`s on the disk?
An important component of controlling data storage costs is reducing the overall price tag. It is widely accepted that a third of the data stored in the average corporation is duplicated. With a little analysis, the copies can be deleted, reducing management costs and extending the life of the hardware.
By engaging in more in-depth analysis of its data, a company could delete a further third of its data (depending on the sector) that is redundant or irrelevant - such as music or video files employees feel are critical to keep for the long-term. This leaves only a third of the original data that needs to be stored, managed, backed up and made available in disaster recovery solutions - which translates to a large amount of money saved.
But that`s not all: yet another cost that needs to be incorporated into the total cost of storage is that of data migration. Current legislation in SA and abroad requires companies to keep information for a long time. In effect, certain records have a lifespan of 20 or 30 years - or longer for insurance companies - during which time they must be retrievable.
The ability to read this data depends on the quality of the media on which it is saved, and the hardware and software used to access it. Given the constant evolution of technology, will an IT department be able to run and service devices that are 10 or more years old? Additionally, will the media on which the data is stored still be readable?
The answer to these questions is typically no. Data therefore needs regularly to be transferred to newer media using the latest technology to ensure it is always available. There are naturally additional personnel and hardware costs to bear in this process, in addition to the risk of data loss during migration.
Less than the sum of its parts
If a company were to analyse its data carefully and reduce it to one-third its size, the cost of managing the information would also be reduced. Significantly, while 33% of the data may only require 33% of the disk space and associated costs, the related costs of maintenance, management and personnel would be reduced by more than one-third. Effective storage management is therefore not only needed as an efficient business process, but also as a cost reduction initiative.
Even though the per-megabyte costs of storage software and hardware are decreasing, little effect is felt in IT departments because of the constant increase in information that business needs to store. Storage costs amount to far more than the products` price tag, and careful planning and analysis is required if IT departments are to control expenditure while delivering effective information availability to their customers. Knowing what you have stored and why is the best discount available.
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