Some time ago, Gartner published some statistics that suggest just 40 percent of the corporate data store is actually in use. The other 60 percent is typically secondary copies, or data held in cold storage.
Ironically, digital transformation initiatives rely on using all available data to inform business strategy. Which means that any organization undergoing digital transformation will benefit from bringing more of their data back online.
Repurposing backups
Disaster recovery investment is a relatively expensive, but completely necessary investment. Data held in cold storage is maintained off-line – and off-site – for maximum protection. The trouble is that the data is also inaccessible, which limits the scope of your analytics – and therefore the insights that can be derived from them.
In order to restore balance to your big data analytics program, it is necessary to bring that information out of cold storage and make it available online. But doing so will exacerbate one of the biggest problems faced by the CTO – how to manage exponential data growth.
Redeploying existing hardware assets
Rather than purchasing new hardware to hold old data, your business can simply retain existing assets. Data is then retained online for instant access as and when required.
Backed by a suitable third party support and maintenance agreement, these older arrays can be kept in circulation for much longer. And by fully populating available disk trays, you may even be able to slow data centre floor space expansion and expand available capacity at far lower cost than buying brand new storage.
It could be that the future success of your digital transformation strategy is firmly rooted in the past.
To learn more about redeploying your existing hardware, or for extending the lifespan of your arrays post-warranty, please get in touch.