Companies Not Maximizing Storage Efficiencies for Their Persistent Data

COPAN Systems announced results from a new survey conducted to better understand how companies are managing and storing persistent data – the non-changing static data that makes up the majority of stored corporate data. With a respondent base of over 250 IT professionals at Fortune 1000 companies, government and academic institutions around the world, the survey indicates that IT departments are not managing their persistent data effectively and are not fully educated about the environmental and economical impact of their current storage decisions.

Notable findings of the survey include:

• 71 percent of companies are storing persistent data on either primary storage or a mix of primary and archival systems – an expensive, inefficient and environmentally wasteful method for storing static data.
• While most industry analysts estimate persistent data to be 70 percent or more of all corporate data, only 30 percent of the respondents estimated their persistent data to be that large, an indication that most companies do not understand how much persistent data is clogging their storage networks.
• 20 percent acknowledged they did not know how much persistent data currently resides on their systems.

“Storing persistent data that is infrequently accessed on primary storage systems is a huge waste of both economic and environmental resources,” said Jay Gagne, Solutions Architect, COPAN Systems. “We have found that many companies don’t fully grasp the types of data they are storing and how to store it effectively. There is a great untapped opportunity for companies to leverage more cost effective storage strategies to help dramatically alleviate the pressures that persistent data is putting on data centers around the world.”

“All organizations should constantly seek better understanding of all their data so that they can employ the most appropriate and cost effective solutions, and nowhere is this more important than with the vast amounts of persistent corporate data,” said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Although no one truly knows the actual percentage of data that is persistent, we estimate it to be at least 60% of data, probably more, and definitely growing. Yet many data centers simply do not have the right architecture in place to address this. Whether driven by regulation compliance or business imperatives, an ever-increasing amount of data – mainly persistent data by its very nature – has to be securely stored for increasing periods of time. Persistent data (whether it becomes so, or whether it is indeed born so) needs a different storage approach from dynamic data, both in terms of device and process, if users want improved operational and economic efficiencies in their data centers.”

The survey also revealed several key factors that companies are struggling with as they attempt to manage their growing persistent data:

• Complexity and costs are inhibiting IT department from better managing persistent data overload. Management complexity is the top pain point in managing persistent data, selected by 36 percent of respondents. Shrinking IT budgets ranked second (20 percent), followed by rising costs of storing data (18 percent).
• Compliance requirements were selected as the top driver in the growth of persistent data by 22 percent of respondents. The ability of users to create more content ranked second at 17 percent.
• Respondents are conflicted on how to address energy efficiency as their persistent data continues to grow. While 70 percent declare energy efficiency as a priority for their company, only 18 percent consider it as ‘very important’ in making their storage decision. 15 percent say energy efficiency is ‘not important’ while 66 percent say it is ‘considered, but not the top priority.’
• Cost was the highest ranked factor for storage purchasing decisions, followed closely behind by reliability, scalability and capacity and ease of use.
• Respondents confirm that data is growing at incredible rates. 41 percent report that their corporate data has grown between 25 and 50 percent over the last 12 months. 13 percent report growth between 50 and 99 percent, while 10 percent have realized data growth greater than 100 percent.
• The challenge of managing the cost and complexity of file-based data growth continues with 63 percent of their persistent data identified as file based, such as documents, email, images, photos and multimedia or video and audio files.

The survey respondents are responsible for large data sets, with nearly 20 percent reporting over a petabyte of data in their system and more than 50 percent reporting more that 100 terabytes of data.