Not too long ago, Komprise COO Krishna Subramanian was featured in a webinar with The Register: Quit Your Addiction to Storage – Do You Own Your Data or Does Your Data Own You? The discussion, presentation, and demonstration do a nice job of summarizing the magnitude of the unstructured data growth problem and the power and potential of Intelligent Data Management.
The discussion starts with an acknowledgement that enterprise data storage costs are out of control. Too often IT organizations are caught in an endless cycle of buying more storage. Unstructured data is typically strewn across disparate silos and the folks tasked with doing something with that data don’t actually know what’s important and what is not. By nature, we’re all data hoarders. The result is that all the data ends up being managed the same. This means:
- Cold data sits on expensive storage
- Everything gets replicated
- Everything gets backed up and backup windows are getting longer
- Data storage and backup costs are spiraling out of control
Sound familiar?
Data hoarding has become the norm in most industries today, where regulations mandate longer and stricter retention policies. So, how does IT get control of this situation? Is it possible to manage growing unstructured data volumes without disrupting the end-user experience? Can unstructured data management be simple, seamless, and transparent to your end users, who may still need data access, but don’t need to know what data is actively being managed?
The good news is that the answer is Yes! That’s Komprise: Know First. Move Smart. Take Control.
The bad news is that most enterprise IT professionals think they have a storage problem, when in fact, they really have an unstructured data management problem. A few points to consider from this IDC report: How to Manage Your Data Growth Smarter with Data Literacy:
- 60% of the storage budget is not really spent on storage. It’s spent on secondary copies of data for data protection – backups, backup software licenses, replication, and disaster recovery.
- 1/3 of IT organizations are spending most of their IT storage on secondary data.
Clearly, a lack of active management of all of your enterprise unstructured data is where the problem really is today. So, what can be done? The IDC report recommends to remember three key things:
- Focus less on finding alternatives to store data better/faster and focus more on finding intelligent alternatives to data management.
- Use modern, next-generation cloud data management technologies that are lightweight and non-intrusive, and that demonstrate powerful return on investment.
- Aim to deliver continuous insights as a service to business and achieve speed of intelligence for a competitive edge.
But what about the cloud, you ask?
First of all, too many IT organizations are thinking of the cloud as a cheap locker for enterprise data. They start by backing it up, which results in pay-by-the-drink pricing for a very high percentage of cold data. As your unstructured data volumes grow, your frequency of buying more cloud storage grows too, resulting in an endless cycle of lock-in and out of control cloud spend. It’s old thinking being applied to a new set of challenges that your new hybrid, multi-cloud world represents.
Secondly, most cloud migrations fail. In this two-part webinar series, we summarize 7 reasons why cloud migrations fail. They are:
- Complex Ad-Hoc Approach (one-off vs. on-going data management)
- Insufficient Planning
- Multiple Cloud Storage Options
- Downtime Impact
- Time Consuming
- Data Integrity
- Sunk Costs
The bottom line is that when you’re considering moving to the cloud, it’s going to be even more important to first know your data; properly plan your move; and ensure you’re able to manage data efficiently and effectively across data centers and both cloud and multi-cloud environments.
The good news is that’s Komprise Intelligent Data Management as a Service (DMaaS).
As we like to say: Don’t compromise. Komprise.
Know First. Move Smart. Save More.
