8 Ways to Save on Data Storage FAQs

Why are enterprise file storage and backup costs rising so rapidly in 2026, and why is the problem getting worse?

Enterprise file data storage costs are in crisis in 2026 due to a convergence of three forces that reinforce each other: data volume growth, hardware price spikes, and the hidden multiplier effect of backup and DR. The full picture:

• The price spike — Gartner estimates a 130% increase in combined DRAM and SSD prices by end of 2026, driven by AI’s insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory and NAND flash; DRAM inventories have collapsed to just two weeks’ supply, with the shortage expected to last well into 2027
• Storage is only 25% of the true cost — with backups and disaster recovery copies, the true cost of file data is 3–4x higher than storage hardware alone; cold data stored on primary NAS is replicated identically to hot active data, multiplying cost without multiplying value
• Budget compression — data storage, backups, and DR costs now constitute more than 30% of IT budgets for 55% of enterprises, according to the Komprise 2026 State of Unstructured Data Management Report
• ROT amplification — unstructured data estates contain vast quantities of ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial data) that offers little to no value for analytics, modeling, or operational insight, yet consumes the same expensive storage, backup, and DR resources as valuable data
• Prices won’t come back down — once storage vendors raise prices in a supply-constrained market, pricing tends to be sticky; buying more capacity now locks organizations into higher per-TB costs for years

What are the most effective ways to reduce file storage and backup costs without disrupting operations or buying more hardware?

The Komprise 8 Ways to Save on File Storage and Backup Costs eBook identifies eight proven tactics that enterprise IT teams are using to cut storage costs by 70% or more, starting with visibility and ending with governance. The most impactful:

• Know what you have first: gain deep visibility into data profiles across all hybrid storage environments before making any decisions; The Komprise Global Metadatabase indexes all data across NAS and cloud silos, identifying hot, warm, and cold data by department, user, file type, age, and cost
• Tier cold data transparently: identify cold data ready for tiering and move it to lower-cost object storage or cloud using Komprise Intelligent Data Tiering, freeing 70%+ of expensive primary flash capacity without any disruption to users or applications
• Eliminate ROT: identify and confine or delete redundant, obsolete, and trivial files before tiering or migrating to avoid paying to move and store data that has no value
• Adopt a data services mindset: change the internal conversation from “buy more storage” to “deliver data services” that are independent of storage technology and vendor
• Build a ransomware protection strategy that also cuts costs: tier cold files transparently to immutable object storage with object lock retention; this simultaneously shrinks the ransomware attack surface by up to 80% and eliminates those files from the backup and DR footprint
• Avoid vendor lock-in: use storage-agnostic tiering and migration that writes data in open formats, so future storage decisions are not constrained by rehydration costs or proprietary format dependencies
• Get strategic on cloud: monitor cloud resources for under-utilization and implement automated policies that move data and workloads to optimize cost continuously, not just at procurement time
• Book a Flash Stretch Assessment: Komprise provides an assessment for qualified environments of 500TB+ that quantifies exactly how much cold data sits on expensive primary storage and models the savings before any commitment

What is Komprise Flash Stretch and how does it help IT teams offset the NAND flash price crisis?

Komprise Flash Stretch is an assessment and intelligent tiering program specifically designed to help enterprise IT teams reclaim capacity on expensive all-flash NAS without purchasing new hardware, directly addressing the 2026 NAND and DRAM price crisis. How it works and what it delivers:

• Capacity assessment — Komprise scans the entire NAS estate and shows exactly which files are cold, who owns them, how long since last access, and how much it costs to keep them on primary flash, with a projected 3-year savings model
• Transparent tiering to any cloud or object store — After the assessment, work with Komprise to deploy Transparent Move Technology to tier cold files to lower-cost destinations while maintaining full, transparent access from the original NAS path – users and applications see no change
• No rehydration penalty — unlike storage-vendor tiering that triggers costly recalls during antivirus scans, defragmentation, or hardware refreshes, Komprise Dynamic Links eliminate rehydration entirely and avoid vendor lock-in at the destination
• 70%+ capacity freed — on a typical enterprise NAS estate, 60–70% of files are cold and have not been accessed in over a year; tiering these files frees immediate headroom without a hardware purchase
• 3–4x cost reduction — because tiered files are also removed from the backup and DR footprint, the savings compound across storage, backup licensing, and DR replication costs
• Pfizer proof point — Pfizer reduced storage and cloud costs by 70–75% with full ROI within 90 days using Komprise intelligent tiering. Read the case study.

How does the storage cost crisis affect AI initiatives, and how can intelligent data management address both problems simultaneously?

The NAND flash price crisis and AI data requirements are creating a direct conflict for enterprise IT: the same high-performance flash NAS that AI training and inferencing workloads demand is also the most expensive tier to keep full of cold, ungoverned data. Intelligent unstructured data management resolves both pressures in one motion:

• Free primary storage for AI — tiering cold data off expensive flash NAS creates immediate headroom for the high-performance storage that active AI datasets and inference workloads require, without a hardware purchase or a budget increase
• AI pipelines break on poor data quality — unstructured data estates filled with ROT offer little to no value for AI modeling or operational insight; Komprise Smart Data Workflows filter 70%+ of data noise before ingestion, reducing AI compute costs and improving model accuracy
• Tiering builds the AI data foundation — Komprise indexes all file metadata at the point of tiering, continuously building the Global Metadatabase with location, access patterns, file type, and classification data that AI pipelines need to identify and curate the right data at runtime
• Cloud-native AI access — data tiered to cloud object storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage) is immediately accessible to cloud AI training, RAG pipelines, and analytics services in native format, without a secondary migration or ETL step
• Sensitive data governance before AI ingestion — Komprise Sensitive Data Management detects PII, PHI, and IP during the tiering and analysis phase, ensuring regulated data is handled correctly before it reaches AI tools that could expose it

The organizations that address storage cost bloat with intelligent tiering today are building the governed, classified, indexed data estate that gives them a head start on AI ROI tomorrow.

How can enterprise IT teams reduce storage costs today without creating new vendor dependencies or lock-in that constrains future decisions?

Vendor lock-in is the hidden long-term cost that turns a short-term storage cost fix into a permanent liability. The Komprise Intelligent Data Management approach is explicitly designed to eliminate lock-in at every layer:

• Storage-agnostic across platforms — Komprise works across NetApp, Dell, HPE, Nasuni, IBM, Everpure (Pure Storage), VAST Data, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and any combination; the same cost optimization strategy and tiering policies apply across the entire heterogeneous estate without requiring a specific vendor’s storage to run
• Open format tiering — Komprise Transparent Move Technology writes tiered data in native file and object formats, not proprietary blocks, so data is directly accessible from the cloud destination without routing through the source NAS, and can be moved to any future storage vendor without rehydration
• Data outlives storage — enterprise data will outlive storage hardware, making storage-agnostic approaches to managing and delivering data increasingly important; proprietary tiering ties data to a vendor whose hardware, pricing, and product roadmap may not align with the organization’s needs in three to five years
• Adopt new data management metrics — move beyond cost-per-TB hardware metrics to data-value metrics: cost per active TB, cost per data service delivered, percentage of cold data on hot storage, and AI pipeline data quality scores
• Analytics-first, always — the eBook’s consistent principle is know before you move; Komprise Analysis provides full visibility and projected ROI before any tiering, migration, or data management and mobility decision is made, ensuring storage investments are driven by actual usage data rather than perceived need

Komprise saves customers an average of 57% of overall storage costs and over $2.6M annually on a 4PB NAS environment with 30% year-over-year growth, without requiring any specific storage vendor, any proprietary format, or any long-term platform commitment.

Read the eBook now