Spending on unnecessary data storage could hit $16.5bn in 10 years despite US government initiative
Mon 30 Jun 2014

US federal agencies will be spending $16.5bn by 2024 storing unnecessary data and working counter to a government initiative to reduce data centre proliferation according to a new study*.
The study found that almost three quarters of Federal IT managers said their agency has maintained or increased their number of data centres since the launch of working directly against the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) introduced in 2010.
It identifies the key barriers to consolidation as overall resistance, data management challenges and data growth which are preventing data centre optimisation and actually driving up the amount of “copy data for multiple purposes” or “redundant copies of non-production data” resulting in increased storage costs.
On average, more than one in four agencies use between 50% to 88% of their data storage capacity on unnecessary data. It found that 27% of the average agency’s storage budget was spent on storing this data and that if that grows as expected at 31% a year that would equate $16.5bn over the next 10 years.
* Consolidation Aggravation: Tip of the Data Management Iceberg, was produced by MeriTalk , a public-private partnership, and underwritten by data management company, Actifio.