The Hidden Costs of Inefficient File Management

Data can be an asset. Data can also be a liability. Data can ensure that your enterprise achieves a competitive advantage. Data can also be the reason why your business may go bankrupt. Efficient data management is critical to ensure your business can generate real value from your data assets. This includes overseeing the entire information lifecycle for data within the enterprise.

Unstructured data is on the rise. Data teams within enterprises are retiring legacy systems and disparate data silos to reduce storage costs and reduce compliance risks. However, unstructured files often lose focus, eventually becoming a liability and a cost center within the enterprise.

But how expensive is inefficient file management?

According to IDC’s 2023 report, “What Every Executive Needs to Know About Unstructured Data,” only half of an organization’s unstructured data is analyzed to extract value, and only 58% of unstructured data is reused more than once after its initial use.

22% of unstructured data is unnecessarily replicated because enterprises simply don’t know what to do with it. 40% of all unstructured data is analyzed manually by data teams to extract information of potential value.

This directly translates to increased storage costs from data replication while increasing risks of non-compliance due to data breaches and unauthorized access. This increases legal liabilities for enterprises while also causing a severe loss of repute.

Solution: Effective File Archiving

To mitigate these risks, enterprises need a centralized file archiving solution to ensure effective data purging at the end of its lifecycle. Here is how a good file archiving system can benefit your organization:

• Reduced Storage Costs: By effectively archiving inactive files, enterprises can free up primary storage of important active files while archiving older and less important ones to low-cost secondary tier storage. This translates to lower costs and more effective management of active storage infrastucture.
• Facilitate Records Retention: Compliance Enterprises can enforce data retention policies to ensure the required files are stored until legally mandated – then efficiently disposed. Enterprises need a solution that allows easy access to archived data to ensure prompt response to legal and regulatory requests. This can significantly reduce non-compliance risks and legal costs.
• Improved Data Security: Proper file archiving isolates unused data from potential security threats to active storage and live systems. This reduces security risks, data breaches, and ransomware attacks, leading to better data protection within the enterprise.
• Streamlined Workflow: Efficient archiving automates data lifecycle management, freeing up valuable time and resources for data management teams. They can focus on analyzing valuable data and extracting insights that drive business growth.
• Fueling AI and Machine Learning: An enterprise’s archive data can be a source repository for ML and AI initiatives. AI/ML models can utilize a business’ archived data to discover patterns and trends that traditional analytics would miss.

An effective file archiving system is a necessity for all businesses looking to transform their data from cost centers to assets that drive profitability. SOLIXCloud File Archiving, an enterprise archiving solution for unstructured data, helps enterprises to consolidate siloes of files into a unified and compliant cloud repository.

SOLIXCloud File Archiving supports all file types, including office files, PDFs, text, images, videos, IoT, logs, and social media. It enables data governance and compliance through Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and effective legal-hold and e-discovery capabilities.