Data Management Glossary
Data Hoarding
What is Data Hoarding?
Data hoarding is now being recognized as a growing challenge in the technology world. Many IT teams are caught in an endless cycle of buying more data storage. Unstructured data is growing at record rates and this data is increasingly being stored across hybrid cloud infrastructure. This massive data growth and increased data mobility has only created more disconnected data silos. Just like hoarding has been recognized as a real problem in the real-world (see reality TV shows like Hoarders and Storage Wars), data hoarding refers to the practice of retaining large amounts of data that is no longer needed or is rarely used, for extended periods of time. This is a common problem in many organizations, where employees tend to save data out of habit, fear of losing it, or simply because they don’t know what to do with it.
What is the impact of data hoarding?
The impact of data hoarding is more significant than most people / organizations realize, including:
- Increased costs: Storing large amounts of unnecessary data can be expensive, especially if the organization is using expensive storage solutions, such as high-end disk arrays or tape libraries.
- Reduced efficiency: Hoarded data can slow down systems and applications, as well as increase the time required to complete backups and other data management tasks.
- Compliance risks: Hoarded data can pose a risk to organizations in terms of compliance, as they may contain sensitive information that is subject to data privacy regulations.
- Cybersecurity risks: Hoarded data can also pose a security risk, as it may contain sensitive information that could be targeted by cybercriminals or hackers.
Stop Treating All Data the Same
Sound familiar?
- Cold data sits on expensive storage.
- Everything gets replicated.
- Everything gets backed up and backup windows are getting longer.
- Costs are spiraling out of control.
The IDC report, How to Manage Your Data Growth Smarter with Data Literacy noted:
- 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.
And with ransomware attacks on the rise, which increasingly target unstructured data, it’s increasingly important to find ways to manage, tier, migrate, replicate file data within tight IT budgets. Read the blog post: How to Protect File Data from Ransomware at 80% Lower Cost.
Dealing with Data Hoarding
To address the data hoarding challenge and establish an Intelligent Data Management strategy, IDC recommends the following:
- Focus less on finding alternatives to store data better/faster and focus more on finding intelligent alternatives to unstructured 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.
Establish a Cold Data Storage Strategy
One obvious strategy to deal with data hoarding is to define a cold data storage strategy and establish unstructured data management policies.
Read this post to learn how to quantify the business value impact of Komprise Intelligent Data Management.
