The Copy Data Problem: An Order of Magnitude Analysis – IDC
6TB out of every 10TB of disk systems allocated to copies of primary data
IDC opinion
Copy data is everywhere. It is on our laptops, it is on our smartphones, and it is most definitely present in large quantities on servers and in the cloud. Creating copies of primary data (i.e., anything that is a copy of the original) is part of human existence – we all want to make copies of anything important.
We make copies of data at home and at work, and we even design systems to make copies for us automatically. Protecting data by creating copies provides a sense of security and comfort – for individuals and businesses. We have become so used to creating copies that we hardly worry about how much it actually costs to generate and store these secondary and tertiary copies. That is, until it can be quantified and more importantly demonstrated that there are ways to manage data copies more efficiently.