(4-Dec-09) In the race between plummeting costs per terabyte and exploding amounts of data in need of storage, the latter perpetually seems miles ahead. In 2007, IDC estimated that the “digital universe” would grow from 161 exabytes in 2006 to 988 exabytes in 2010—a more than 6X increase in four years.
Especially for enterprises, which live and breathe data, there can seem to be little hope of stemming the information flood, much of which must be backed up with increasingly limited resources. However, although there’s no way to turn back the tide of data, there are ways for organizations to trim backup costs and keep from drowning in idle data.
Less Is Better
“Backup needs are growing exponentially, just as budgets are tightening more than ever, prompting the search for backup solutions that will reduce costs and simplify storage operations,” says Mike Ewell, product manager at HP StorageWorks . “A good example of such a technology is data deduplication.”