In the early days of computer and server storage, disk storage was hugely expensive so users and companies were extremely sensible about the amount of data they tried to store.
As storage costs diminished though with advances in technology storage cost tumbled so the need to be so careful slipped by the wayside and in most cases went in the opposite direction as users and companies become almost blase about the amount of data they used and scant regard was paid to storing the same file in different places more than once.
Before long companies (and individual users) find that it is quite easy to end up with the same file on the same computer but when you apply this to a corporate environment the effects of data duplication are simply huge with the files resident in multiple location.
Over time though this has once more become a bit of a problem, not because of the cost of storage but more because of the cost of disaster recovery and data recovery solutions that need to be implemented within a business, and on a wider note document control or management.
The level of file duplication now prevalent in most companies IT infrastructure is reaching critical mass to the point that it is impinging on IT policies and costs. Managing file versions (version control) on projects was (and still is) for example ultimately taken care of by ever increasingly complex document management programs but even these can add to the problem.
In addition documents outside of client project controls still need to be managed effectively as before long even basic company documentation if not properly controlled may see several versions of the same document in circulation around the company at the same time.
One of the biggest culprits of this is of course the companies own e-mail system which in a typical scenario sees an e-mail come in with an attachment (which could be a large word document or PowerPoint presentation), the recipient take a copy of the file and saves it on his own hard drive and then forwards the e-mail to a colleague working on the same project.
The colleague than does exactly the same thing with another project co-worker and before you know it multiple instances of the same file are now stored in a number of in boxes, sent items folders and multiple hard drives.
This effectively leaves the business with potential file version issues, security risks and of course additional data that will require backing up either on site or externally to remote servers if disaster recovery solutions have been put in place.
If you extrapolate the above scenario to even a small business with less than 100 employees for example, it becomes very noticeable that data duplication has become a major issue with many small, medium and large corporations
Simplistically put data duplication technology works by radically reduces the amount of duplicate data that many businesses currently need to store or backup by rather than keeping multiple instances of the same file, simply referencing multiple files to a single instance instead.
This massively reduces the amount of data requiring management, storage, backup and also helps to streamline disaster recovery solutions.
Whilst the need for data duplication is probably a requirement for nearly all businesses, economies of scale (number of users or the amount of data) means that larger corporations will generally see the best return on investment in data duplication.
| Dave Talbot is the owner of Computer Repair UK, a website dedicated to educating computer and PC users about basic essential computer maintenance and the data recovery services directory, an essential guide to data recovery issues and data recovery companies. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Talbot |
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