Unstructured data now accounts for about 90% of enterprise information for many organizations (Source: IDC) and continues to grow exponentially. These organizations estimate that over 50% of their data is inactive and is generally stored on Tier 1 primary storage. This is both a drain on expensive IT infrastructure resources, ties up headcount with increased management overheads and increases IT expenditure by constantly requiring investment in more storage and backup capabilities.
In speaking with IT professionals they struggle with lack of visibility of their data and do not know if their storage platform is being used effectively or overloaded with stale and inactive data. The situation is compounded by the explosive growth of unstructured data stored within organizations Tier 1 storage and the associated poor data retention policies. This results in static and inactive data being kept on expensive high performance storage with the knock on effect of extending backup windows which often means some organizations struggle to make full backups of their data. This lack of visibility makes planning, resourcing and investment decisions almost guess work.
The solution is to access detailed information about the data stored on your file system that will allow you to understand if your storage platform is being used efficiently. Analysis of the types of files and how recently they have been accessed will allow you to decide if you should be storing these files on your expensive Tier 1 storage or if the files can be moved to a low cost, highly scalable OPEX based cloud storage solution. Colt has the answers to these challenges. If you would like to know more please contact Anthony.Brooks@colt.net