Although estimates vary, most experts anticipate IT costs to increase by 5.6% this year. Of course, the unexpected turn of events in 2020 means that number may actually end up being much higher. With more workers operating from their homes and businesses having to adapt to more cloud-based and remote environments, IT spend will likely be higher than we previously thought.
So, how can you cut your IT costs in other areas to compensate? One of the best ways to reduce your IT spending is with automation. 42% of businesses in the UK reported that their main priority with automation is to reduce costs. Aparavi’s smart platform can help your company automate and simplify data management, reducing your costs and improving productivity at the same time.
3 Ways That Automation and Smarter Systems Slash IT Costs
1. Reduce Storage Expenses
How much does data storage really cost? We’ve seen the price of raw storage continue to fall as Moore’s Law holds up in the data storage space. A single GB costs mere pennies today in traditional hard drives. But those numbers don’t tell us the whole story.
One report suggested that the cost of storing a terabyte of data runs about $3,300 annually. That may seem outrageous, but consider that the storage itself is only a fraction of the actual costs of data storage. You need servers to handle the data, high-speed networking infrastructure, electricity, and employees to maintain each link in the chain. All of these costs add up.
Even if you opt for cloud storage to alleviate some of these other variables, if your data isn’t properly curated and organized, your bill will end up being much higher than it needs to be. So, what can a smart, automated platform do to shred those expensive storage bills?
How Automation Helps
Most companies in the United States have at least 100 terabytes of stored data. If we take our $3,300 estimate to be accurate, that equates to a hefty $330,000 storage bill every year. However, many companies have more than a petabyte of data, pushing those costs into the millions.
The Aparavi Platform intelligently scans all of your files regardless of where they are or what format they are in. If it finds matching files, it can flag them for review or automatically sort them based on the parameters you establish. With an automated system hunting for redundant data, you’ll be able to reduce your storage bills.
2. Simplify Compliance Costs
The GDPR and CCPA are just a couple of examples of new laws regarding data privacy and consumer data rights. Brazil approved their own such law this year, the LGPD, and more are on the way. Naturally, this has led to the rise of the Chief Data Officer position as one solution to data compliance.
However, hiring experts in data compliance is an expensive solution. While your company may still want to have a leader in the department to develop best practices and ensure employee compliance with company policy, the brunt of the work can be automated.
Our platform is designed with compliance in mind. It can automatically remove data after a set period of time and allow you to easily keep consumer personal information from leaving your possession in accordance with user requests. We stay on top of the latest developments in data legislation so that you don’t have to.
Avoiding Fines
It’s worth mentioning that investing in smart compliance is a form of insurance that keeps other business expenses down. Just recently, clothing giant H&M was fined €35.3m for keeping excessive records about employees. If your business gets fined because of bad IT practices, then it’s fair to consider that a part of your IT costs.
3. Reduce Personnel Costs
However, data analysts don’t come cheap. If you’re going to splurge on analysts’ salaries, you want them to be doing their most valuable tasks at all times. Unfortunately, research has consistently revealed that data analysts have to spend much of their time cleaning up data and preparing it for effective analysis.
The New York Times reported as much and estimated that 50-80% of analysts’ time was spent doing “janitor work.” It’s telling that even these professionals see these tasks as beneath their level of expertise.
Automatically Remove ROT
We talked about redundant data, the “R” in ROT, but what about the other two? Outdated data and trivial data slow down data analysis significantly.
Outdated data will lead to poor results, as the data does not accurately reflect the current situation. When this data conflicts with newer data, analysts may need to redo work. Trivial data is often incomplete or simply unnecessary. It can also hinder an analyst’s work, as they have to determine if the file actually does matter or not.
The Aparavi Platform looks for ROT data in all of its forms. You can automatically archive outdated files and establish protocols for removing old data after a certain amount of time. Trivial data can often be caught by looking at how frequently it’s been accessed. With an automated platform, you can let your professionals do professional-grade work.
Start Being Smarter
If your IT costs are starting to make the CFO sweat, then it’s time to start managing your data intelligently. Rid your company of ROT and simplify your storage needs. Conta12ct Aparavi to find out how our intelligent, automated data management platform can slash your IT expenses and supercharge your company’s productivity with one solution.