Define critical and important data

Regardless of the age of your business, you likely have far more data lying around then you need. When you perform your data backups, a significant portion of that data doesn’t need to be saved because it has no value to the business, which means you are throwing away time and money. The first step is defining what business value different categories of data provide. In other words, what do you absolutely need, what would be nice to have and what wouldn’t matter at all in the event of a system failure or disaster. Admittedly, this isn’t an easy task for most companies and very few do it well, but if you can get your arms around this concept, there are a number of opportunities for cost savings and operational improvements. Define categories such as critical, important, sensitive, valuable and low value – note that you may want certain data to belong to more than one category...certain client data, for example, may be low value, but it could also be sensitive due to a confidentially obligation.  Critical data is the data that your company can’t operate without or data that is subject to certain laws or regulations. If everything crashed tomorrow, what information would you need - and how fast would you need it - to get up and running again.  Once you have your data dropped into these buckets, assign separate expiration dates to the different categories and define restore time objectives.  A restore time objective is usually measured in hours and it reflects how long you would be willing to wait before getting the data back in the event of a data loss or a disaster.

Automate your data retention policy

Simply categorizing data by itself doesn’t do much to cut costs – you now have to apply the retention policy, which can be an arduous task without some technology to automate the process. By implementing a data retention policy and automating the process, you are basically pruning your data and reducing the amount of data that needs to be backed up and restored. Lower data volumes mean less storage and lower restore time objectives, which both translate into lower overall costs.

Implement data de-duplication technology

The next area to examine is data de-duplication. Using technologies such as block-level backup and data storage, duplicate data can be identified and only be backed up and stored once.  If you’re backing up 10 Windows servers, do you really need 10 copies of the operating system? Instead of backing up duplicate data, this approach identifies redundant information and simply places a marker that points to the original data wherever duplicate information appears. This means that no single piece of information gets copied more than once. Your storage costs are reduced, your restore time objectives are easier to hit and your company saves money. If your current data backup solution doesn’t offer data de-duplication, look for a company that does.

Centralize administration of remote locations

A shocking portion of the costs for some companies comes from administration costs at remote locations. If you’re an organization with IT operations in multiple places, chances are you had two choices when determining how to backup data and systems in each place – you either put in massive amounts of communications bandwidth or you put a tape backup system at each location. Problem is, neither of those solutions make sense considering technologies available today.  The cost of implementing, administering, upgrading and monitoring multiple systems can get out of control quickly.  I know of one company that had 23 small locations within about a 150 mile radius – they had a full time person that was responsible for rotating tapes, all they did was drive location to location every day – true story. A solid backup solution should allow for multi-site management through a single central location...including the process of getting the data offsite.  

There are some areas in which a company can simply make cuts blindly and other areas in which cuts need to be done with surgical precision. Reducing data backup costs is important, but if you aren’t careful, you may end up doing more harm than good.

The entire technology industry evolves at an incredible pace. What was once state of the art quickly becomes yesterday’s news at an almost shocking rate. If your business backs up all of their data to an off-site location or has engaged in any type of strategic planning around data storage, you may have heard of data de-duplication. This process, which changes the way that data is stored has been getting a lot of attention lately and it is fast becoming the industry norm. Before you jump on the data de-duplication bandwagon, however, it is important that you understand how the process works and how it impacts all data management processes, especially backup and recovery.

Simply put, data de-duplication decreases the total amount of data by examining the building blocks that make up individual files and comparing them to an index of previously stored data – if the data is recognized, then a marker or pointer is inserted to the original block of data rather the actual data.  The result can be a significant decrease in total data storage and a cascade of ancillary benefits such as decreased backup and recovery windows and better overall storage utilization. Let’s look at some benefits you can take from data de-duplication.

Cost
Because you are now able to store all of your data within significantly less space than before, you flat-out need less space – less hardware is a good thing, right?

Efficiency
Because you are moving less data back and forth from backups to restores and back again, the process is significantly more efficient. You aren’t wasting time backing up the same data over and over again, so your servers spend less time being down and inaccessible and you can get more work done, either remotely or in your office. As they say, time truly is money and with more efficient backup systems in place, your business can do more business.

Speed
Less data means less time to complete familiar tasks, which means that the total backup and restore times are significantly reduced. And productivity is significantly increased.

Bandwidth
Less data means less bandwidth to complete the same process in the same amount of time.  Less pressure on the network means you can meaningfully plan network capacity requirements and right-size the infrastructure.  Before, you were required to managed to the highest denominator – often backup and restore processes.

Time
While all of these benefits are clearly interrelated, time is often the driving reason to consider de-duplication.  Assuming you keep the same infrastructure, same bandwidth and same number of tasks, benefits manifest themselves in decreased time for data processing.  More aggressive restore time objectives, smaller backup windows – more time to do more productive things.

The return on implementing a Business Intelligence solution is a frequent concern for companies who are considering an implementation. After working in BI for a few years, I have seen the returns that companies reap. They can be concisely grouped into a handful of categories and whittled into a single statement:

The business value of BI is the insight and analysis provided in a timely manner regarding markets, customers, vendors and internal processes. Decisions based on the analyses will lead to higher profit margins, increased revenue, reduced cost plus more satisfied and loyal customers and a competitive advantage which leads to greater market share.

Better Customer Relationships
BI opens the door to understanding and predicting the behavior, wishes and possibilities of the customer and that leads to new revenue streams, a better company image and targeted, more successful marketing strategies. You are able to meet or exceed your customer expectations based on factual information and greater customer satisfaction.

Improved Productivity
BI can have an enormous impact on productivity. No longer are there pockets of information in the form of Access or Excel that produce reports a few weeks after data is collected. Instead of manipulating data manually, employees access a report that takes just a few seconds to run.

Performance measurement and monitoring sometimes referred to as “Operational Business Intelligence” leads to improved business processes, greater satisfaction for employees over their work and optimal time management.

Timely, Improved Decision Making
BI makes it easy for decision-makers to get critical information anytime, anywhere through the Web, mobile device or email. Cutting down on reaction time turns into dollar-savings and gives you a competitive advantage. Fraud prevention that used to take weeks to track now can be monitored throughout the day and identify fraudulent activity instantly.

Single Version of the Truth
When analytics lead to decisions, data integrity is paramount. Decision-makers must be confident that the decisions they are making are based on valid data. Moreover, having a single set of definitions and terminology improves communication and leads to more consistent, efficient decisions.

Data Visualization
Data visualization is analysis everyone in the enterprise can understand. Employees across the enterprise can easily keep track of key performance indicators and gain a better understanding of how the business or the individual is performing against the business strategies. When Information in easy to interact with, people are better able to analyze and evaluate it, resulting in well-informed, insightful decision making.

Enterprise-wide Data Share
BI lets you share and manage information in a security-enhanced web environment with a central location to monitor your reports and analyze your data. You can combine and cross-reference important and valuable data currently being captured by internal and transactional systems to enhance your reporting. You are able to produce analyses and reports on all aspects of the business.