Your Existing Storage: Should It Stay or Should It Go?

In a recent blog we talked about today’s data explosion—and how it’s driven by the desire to keep more data than ever to extract all of its value. As you assess the need to trade your traditional storage in for a new solution that can meet your evolving requirements, there’s one important fact to start with: You can’t afford to ignore the situation.

Data growth is exponential. Consider Intel’s statement in late 2017 that the average car will soon generate 4,000 GB of data per hour of driving.[1] Analyst company Statista estimates that right now in 2018, data center storage capacity stands at 1,450 exabytes and will grow to a massive 2,300 exabytes by 2021.[2] That’s a growth of 60 percent in just three years.

Consider the cost of sticking with what you have and expanding your traditional storage capacity by 60 percent every few years. Consider the cost of hiring enough IT staff to operate and manage all that new infrastructure. Or the cost of building new space to house it all.

What would it cost if you couldn’t comply with industry regulations about how to store and manage data? Regulations grow more comprehensive each year, and noncompliance can lead to lawsuits or a big hit to your reputation.

Even more critical is to consider the cost to your business if you don’t keep up with rising storage requirements. If you can’t store your data, you have to let it go—while your competitors are getting value out of that same type of data today to improve their services and delight their customers.

In the natural world, animals must adapt to swift and significant changes in their environment or they don’t survive. The massive, ever-increasing wave of enterprise data is forcing organizations to do the same. Find ways to store and manage those growing volumes so you can glean insights and knowledge that lead to better customer experiences and more profitable quarters—or get left behind.

But here’s the good news: You have options, and finding a new storage approach to meet current and future requirements doesn’t have to be painful. (Because technology evolves too.) Consider these questions:

• How much would a new storage solution cost? Compare initial costs and long-term savings and value.
• What is the impact to my business if we don’t change?
• What would it cost (in dollars and operational effort) to switch vendors?
• Does my IT team have the skills to embrace a new storage solution?
• Do I have the right partner relationships in place?

It’s also important to assess how your business uses data and which are the most critical data types. In the past, many organizations didn’t differentiate between types of data when storing it—they would store it all on the same type of storage device, usually expensive proprietary disk arrays or proprietary network attached storage (NAS) systems. Now, however, you can manage storage costs better by becoming better informed about the use and value of your data. When you know which data types are most critical to your business, you can make smarter decisions about what needs to be stored on high-performance storage devices and what can be stored using more cost-effective storage solutions.

Armed with knowledge about how your business uses data and the awareness of what it means for your business to stay current with storage requirements, you are now in the ideal position to commit to a change. Watch this space for more details on that, coming soon.

[1] www.information-age.com/explosion-data-2017-repeated-2018-123469890/

[2] www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-management/2018-data-storage-market-overview.html