Copy data virtualisation: The five ways it could save you millions this year

You've heard of server virtualisation. You've heard of network virtualisation. But have you considered virtualising your data yet? Although they were once concepts that seemed outlandish, server and network virtualisation brought about a number of benefits for the users who came around to adopting them, eventually going on to become commonplace in today's enterprise IT departments.

Copy data virtualisation – freeing organisations' data from their legacy physical infrastructure is increasingly seen as the way to deal with the huge amounts of data that are produced within organisations through physical data copying.

While the benefits of adopting copy data virtualisation are far ranging, from increased data protection, to instant data access and mobility, perhaps the most attractive one is the amount of money it saves organisations. Enterprises adopting copy data virtualisation have been able to save upwards of $3 million in some cases, dramatically transforming their businesses and the way they function.

Here are five ways copy data virtualisation could streamline businesses, improve performance and save millions in 2016:

A reduced storage footprint

A recent IDC study revealed that enterprises have an average of 13 physical copies of critical databases and file systems within their organisation, all of which take up storage space in data centers. This data then needs to be managed too. By virtualising this data, businesses are able to eliminate the need to have multiple physical copies, reducing the necessary amount of data sets to just two - production data and one "golden master copy" that can be virtually provisioned as many times as needed, anytime, anywhere. With a smaller storage footprint comes a smaller storage bill.

Redundant technologies removed

To adhere with compliance standards for data protection, IT departments adopt a number of overlapping technologies, such as systems for backups, snapshots, disaster recovery, and more. Data virtualisation removes the need for these redundant point tools by creating virtual, on-demand data copies that can then be provisioned instantly, anywhere, for all related use cases.

A reduction in downtime

According to Gartner, businesses can lose an average of $5,600 per minute in an outage, adding up to over $300,000 per hour. Traditional backup and DR systems are slow to recover data in the event of an outage, taking days or even weeks to get your data back. With virtualised data copies, recovery times drop to minutes, while ensuring delivery of aggressive RTOs and RPOs.

Better use of resources

As virtualised data requires less maintenance and time spent monitoring redundant systems, as well as the reduced downtime, there is no longer the necessity for a large IT team focussed on recurring data management tasks. Alternatively, the amount of time freed up by data virtualisation adoption means the team can now get on with more important projects that move the business forward and improve efficiencies across the organisation.

Taking a business forward

Just like data virtualisation slashes recovery time during an outage, it also slashes provisioning time for data required during test and development. With data virtualisation, provisioning a data copy can take less than a minute and can even be self serviced. With the dev team able to focus more on application development and less on the process waiting for ops to produce test data for them, organisations can enjoy better quality developments with faster-time-to-market and move their business forward in 2016.

Article by Ash Ashutosh, CEO, Actifio