How to Cost-Effectively Store and Manage the Flood of Data Being Generated

By Florian Malecki, Executive Vice President Marketing, Arcserve

Businesses in every industry are increasingly moving to digital platforms. The results? Vast amounts of data are being generated daily for business purposes, from product videos to social media posts and customer transactions to IoT device data. IDC predicts that the volume of unstructured data worldwide will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes (or 175 billion terabytes) in 2025. That’s a 61 percent growth rate!

But this enormous growth isn’t exclusively the result of new data being generated. It’s also because many companies are extremely reluctant to delete any data. That’s certainly understandable, given that it’s difficult at best to identify which data could be important to retain for future use. But does it really make sense to save all your data?

That’s the quandary IT decision-makers are facing as they try to reconcile their growing volume of data against rising costs while ensuring reliability and constant data availability. But there are several solutions and approaches IT managers can leverage to reduce costs while managing and protecting corporate data while ensuring business continuity even if disaster strikes. Here are three areas to consider as you look to manage your data cost-effectively.

Data Tiering: All Data Isn’t Equal

Not all your data is equal in either relevance or importance. If you’re looking to control your data storage costs, there is likely no reason to store or back up all your data. You also probably have a lot of redundant data that doesn’t need long-term storage, such as system images or exchangeable data. That’s why you should consider using storage solutions that offer data tiering. Data tiering lets you keep less-frequently accessed data in lower-cost storage while still protecting your most valuable data. Data tiering also reduces energy costs by requiring less computing power for storage.

Plan for Data Growth

If your company is like many investing in storage solutions today, you probably don’t know how much storage you will need in the future. That raises a couple of issues. First, you may have to go through the evaluation and budgeting process more often than necessary. Second, you could invest in more storage than you need, wasting precious IT dollars. At the same time, the types of data you store will probably also evolve as your business and the technologies you rely on evolve.

Instead of investing in the inflexible, non-scalable solutions often in use today, what’s needed is storage that can be purchased at a reasonable cost and cost-effectively scaled over time. Look for solutions that start with terabytes of storage and scale up to petabytes. The right solution lets you add any number of drives and/or nodes at a granular level to meet your growing storage needs.

Control Costs With AI-Powered Storage

AI-powered storage helps you reduce storage costs while more effectively managing your data. Using AI-powered systems that leverage intelligence and machine learning (ML), you can quickly figure out which data isn’t essential and, therefore, may not need to be stored. AI-supported storage systems help you decide which data sets can be offloaded to the cloud and which should be stored locally. With real-time data analytics performed by the storage system, you can determine the optimal place to store your data and the best way to ensure your data is protected.

Choosing the Right Data Storage Strategy for Your Business

You need to maintain control over your constantly growing data. That starts with sound planning and choosing the right technology for your business. And be sure to keep data tiering, data growth planning, and AI in mind as you review your options.

To learn more about Arcserve data storage, data protection, and disaster recovery solutions, choose an Arcserve technology partner. And check out our on-demand demos to see for yourself what Arcserve products can do.