Enterprise data is growing at a rate of approximately 50% each year. Meanwhile, IT budgets grow about 5% each year.
Even when you factor in Moore’s Law to account for improvements in storage technology, enterprises still must face the fact that data storage stands to take a bigger “byte” out of their budget each year.
Sticking with inexpensive legacy platforms such as tape drives won’t solve the problem. In fact, they can make it worse as more storage appliances are added, creating separate islands of data that each need to be secured, synchronized and updated. Migrating data storage into a public cloud storage environment eliminates some hardware costs and complexity, but those savings are quickly erased by additional fees every time users need to access archived data in the cloud.
How can enterprises meet rising storage demands without raising the cost of storage? Dell EMC has an answer. It’s called Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) and it represents a new paradigm in data archiving: private cloud storage that combines the benefits of public cloud storage (ease/speed of use, scalability, flexibility) and traditional premise-based storage (lower cost, better control/security) in a single solution.
Here are six ways that ECS can stretch your storage budget:
1. Cut the tape.
Tape storage may be inexpensive, but it’s also inefficient, especially if your enterprise needs to access archived data on a regular basis. ECS provides much faster access to data than tape—and at a lower total cost of ownership—allowing enterprises to finally phase out their outmoded tape archives.
2. Stack the boxes.
Network attached storage (NAS) systems are another popular choice for data archiving, but the only way to extend their capacity is to add more boxes to your network. ECS provides enterprise-wide access to data in a single data pool that eliminates the need for multiple boxes. Fewer boxes means lower capex and opex costs, and less risk of a costly technology refresh in three to five years.
3. Get more value from what you’ve got.
Even non-structured, archived data can deliver valuable business insights. ECS brings structured and non-structured data together while supporting different storage frameworks, including file-based storage, object-based storage and Hadoop for rich analytics. ECS also features built-in metadata search capabilities that allow enterprises to quickly organize and analyze data.
4. Automate security and compliance.
In addition to their own security policies, many enterprises are subject to regulatory requirements that dictate how (and for how long) data should be stored. ECS automatically stores data based on specific requirements, enabling enterprises to easily adopt a consistent storage security stance and avoid regulatory fines down the road.
5. Free up space in high-performance storage tiers.
Let’s face it: if enterprises could afford to store all of their data in Flash, they probably would. But the key to a successful storage strategy lies in matching data to its appropriate storage tier. With ECS and data advisory services from Rolta AdvizeX, enterprises can move low-priority data from more expensive storage tiers into the private cloud, improving the performance and lowering the cost of their high-end storage systems.
6. Spend less time backing up data.
By moving low-priority data from high-end storage into the ECS environment, enterprises also gain another important benefit: fewer data backups. This frees up IT resources to focus on more important issues than nightly backups and reduces the operational costs associated with your data environment.
Find out how Rolta AdvizeX can help your business get more value from your storage budget with Elastic Cloud Storage. ▪