-Creation and duplication of electronic data doubles every 18 months
-Recent white paper reveals startling cost factors and risks related to onsite electronic storage
NEW YORK, May 18, 2010 - Viewpointe®, a leading provider of enterprise electronic data archive solutions, today announced the publication of a white paper highlighting the new realities facing enterprises and their mounting electronic storage needs. Viewpointe commissioned the paper, entitled “The Promise of Offsite Electronic Storage” as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to provide useful and relevant information to those affected by electronic storage issues, ranging from CIOs and CFOs to heads of compliance and legal departments. The paper was authored by Brad Nisbet, program manager at IDC, a leading provider of global IT research and advice.
IDC estimates that worldwide the amount of electronic content created and replicated, by consumers and enterprises, doubles every 18 months. This unprecedented growth of electronic content has taken on new urgency for enterprises as they cope with these storage challenges, while infrastructure budgets get increasingly tighter. Within the context of these challenges, the paper reviews the cost factors and risks associated with the two primary solutions for e-storage: enterprise-built and run (onsite) and hosted repository (offsite). In providing detailed information on these two options, the paper gives enterprises the guidelines they need to select an appropriate solution.
“Ultimately, maintaining onsite e-storage, which requires firms to invest in IT infrastructure, while budgets get tighter, is becoming an impossible challenge for many firms,” said Rich Walsh, president, Viewpointe Document Archive and Repository Services. “Companies need to understand current and expected costs and risk burdens related to e-storage. We’re helping companies evaluate the key factors involved, some of which they may not have considered previously.”
According to the paper, further challenges are arising as organizations are looking to manage the growing and variable data retention requirements being driven by the need for business analytics, as well as increased regulatory requirements.
“Among other factors, complying with government-imposed regulations could increase companies’ storage costs and risks,” said Mr. Nisbet. “Fines for noncompliance, payments to third-parties to ensure compliance, as well as reputational risks arising from noncompliance, data breaches or other data-related disasters could all contribute to these costs.”
Companies looking to develop or expand their electronic storage capacity are looking at hard costs for items including: storage systems, storage networking, applications and software, professional services, server infrastructure and datacenter facilities. Usually, these expenditures are made well in advance of actual use, since enterprises must build for future e-storage. Storage utilization rates for most enterprises are often less than 40 percent, creating a mismatch between the expense and the actual implementation. Added to capital costs, are operational expenditures, which include power and cooling, as well as support and maintenance. Costs to power and cool IT equipment, which accounted for approximately 8 percent of datacenter costs in 2000, are expected to grow to 21 percent by 2012.
The paper finds that offsite e-storage can reduce the inefficiency and unpredictability of capital and maintenance costs, because it allows enterprises to pay only for the actual capacity they currently need, as opposed to an in-house infrastructure that is built for potential future needs. Third-party pay-as-you go solutions transfer the burden of utilization to the service provider.
Other findings on the benefits of offsite storage include:
- The natural consolidation of multiple archives into fewer archives, reducing cost while enabling greater efficiencies for control, management and data sharing.
- Transfer of the costs and complexities associated with protecting data to the storage provider.
- Management of digital information is transferred to the service provider, thus allowing compliance, search, business analytics and other information management to be facilitated at a much lower cost to the organization.
“Ultimately, an offsite hosted repository offers companies a secure, scalable, accessible and cost-effective alternative,” added Walsh. “Viewpointe has a reputation for the highest standards, focusing on customer requirements, risk management and data security and we continue to work closely with our customers to mitigate data storage issues.”
Viewpointe’s archive was architected and built in 2000 from the ground up to be a best-in-class offsite solution for e-content storage and retrieval. Well known as a check archive, and trusted by some of the largest financial institutions in the U.S., the Viewpointe archive infrastructure extended its storage and retrieval expertise beyond check to address other electronic data storage needs. Viewpointe’s archive capacity of more than 20 petabytes is roughly equivalent to 554 billion pages of web content. Since 2002, Viewpointe’s archive has grown from 10 billion images in 2002, to a total of more than 151 billion electronic items (*as of January 31, 2010).
ABOUT VIEWPOINTE
Viewpointe® is a leading provider of multibank infrastructure solutions for customers ranging from credit unions to Fortune 100 financial institutions. With one of the largest national archives of check images and information, Viewpointe offers archive capabilities, end-to-end check image exchange clearing and settlement and Automated Clearing House association services. Bank Technology News named Viewpointe one of the top innovators of 2008, an annual ranking of the 25 most advanced people, companies and technologies in financial services. Since 2006, Viewpointe has been named to the prestigious FinTech 100, representing the best of the best in financial technology and service providers. For more information, please visit http://viewpointe.com/.
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Media Contacts:
Loretta Mock
+1 646-395-6300
viewpointe@cognitomedia.com
IDC White Paper sponsored by Viewpointe, The Promise of Offsite Electronic Storage, Doc # 221441, December 2009