Half of stored files will never be accessed

Waste of space

By ElectricNews.net • Get more from this author

Posted in Storage, 15th May 2007 20:41 GMT

Research released Tuesday by email archiving firm Waterford Technologies has shown that over 50 per cent of files stored by companies are never accessed again.

The figures highlight the growing - and often unnecessary - cost of storage for firms, according to Gary Cosgrave, sales director of Waterford Technologies, a provider of email and file archiving products.

"Even though hardware storage costs per gigabyte are dropping, the costs of managing storage are skyrocketing. It makes more sense to move data to lower cost alternatives instead of struggling with storage problems."

These latest figures have been released at a time of growth for the storage industry, explained Cosgrave who said industry surveys reveal that the amount of data stored on network servers is growing at over 20 percent per year.

Certainly, the amount of digital data stored has never been greater, with research released in March predicting that the figure would increase six-fold by the year 2010 - to a staggering 988 billion gigabytes of data.

The EMC-sponsored study also predicted that organisations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85 per cent of this information, through data centres, telephone and hosting switches, or data back-up depositories.

In January, analysts at iReach predicted that spending on storage products would surge this year as companies aimed to get a better hold of their file storage concerns. The research firm estimated that over 40 percent of companies would be investing in storage solutions this year, while spending on servers and networking would also rise substantially.

iReach analyst Sinead Daly said at the time: "Storage will see faster growth over servers and networking this year with many companies trying to get control of rapidly growing storage requirements and then ensuring this data is secure and protected."

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