Data management is a crucial first step for organizations to effectively analyze data at scale and reduce their environmental impact.
As the world works towards vital net zero targets, digitization has become essential in delivering efficient, green strategies. Data (opens in new tab) is critical in driving better business outcomes and ensuring a sustainable future. On the flip side, however, our new data-driven world throws up its own sustainability challenges. The data centers that house our digital reserves require vast amounts of energy. Global emissions from cloud (opens in new tab) computing, for example, are predicted to amount to over 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, even more than commercial flights.
Over the last decade efforts have been made to ensure data centers are more sustainable. However, while the infrastructure can be made greener, the issue of wasted storage makes efforts harder. The continued storage of useless data drains precious resources. According to Veritas research the power it takes to store such dark data wastes up to 6.4m tons of carbon dioxide yearly. Analysts predict that by 2025 there will be around 91ZB of dark data being held unnecessarily – that is over four times today’s volume.Dark data
On average, our research found that 52% of data stored by organizations is ‘dark’; its content and value are unknown, and it is essentially useless until its value (if any) is determined. At the same time, it is estimated that around one third of organizational data is Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT).
In short, swathes of data are being stored for no reason. ROT data is a major contributor to high storage costs; recent global research suggests over nine in ten organizations exceed their cloud budgets, overspending by an average of 43% mainly on storage (opens in new tab), backup (opens in new tab) and recovery. Much has been said about the financial cost of dark data, but the environmental cost is too often overlooked. Deleting massive spawls of data waste could help drastically reduce organizations’ carbon footprint, leading to greater sustainability and lower costs.
