Businesses wasting billions storing unnecessary data
Following warnings from leading analysts that companies are wasting billions on unnecessary storage, CIOs have been urged to rethink their backup strategies.
Analyst group Gartner found that businesses were spending 20% more than they need to on backing up unnecessary data.
With spending on server and network technologies typically 20 times greater than spending on backup, most companies invest very little in their backup technologies.
But, according to Dave Russell research vice-president of Gartner, businesses are missing a trick by skimping on their backup systems.
“Backup can be an integral part of disaster recovery and high availability, and it can be repurposed for data mining and patch deployment, rather than being a back-end process that can be leveraged by the business,” he said.
Another common problem is for businesses to back up data just in case. This overtaxes the systems and gives businesses a false sense of security.
Often, the problem is that companies mistake backup technology for data archiving, said Russell. “Backup is largely for operational recovery, not for long-term retention.”
The key is to carefully what data your business really needs. It does appear however, that businesses are beginning to take a more selective approach to backup. A survey last year revealed that 50% of companies now keep backup data for 90 days or less, down from two years or more in 2009. Nevertheless, this does mean that the other 50%, are still keeping data for 90 days or more.
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