How does ECX reduce stress for IT teams?

In this day and age, every business generates and harvests data. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Nvidia, and Tesla are the kind of companies that are leaders of the data economy. They are harvesting data to its full extent and continue to find ways of growing their business via data. Worldwide data expected to hit 175 zettabytes by 2025, representing a 61 percent compound annual growth rate according to IDC

People often forget that a lot of this data is simply made up of copies of existing data. Why do copies of data exist? For multiple reasons, the most common reasons include: 

• Backup and Compliance
• Disaster Recovery
• Reporting
• Analytics
• Test & Development
• DevOps &
• Training

To put the scope of how much data is copy data in context, IDC has found that 60 percent of storage is dedicated to managing copies of data--at $55 billion per year collectively.

The most easily observable problem with copy data is there is too much of it. Data reduction capabilities, such as compression and deduplication, are helping reduce the burden of copies, copy data still causes many organizations unwanted stress and costs - the core reasons for these being:

• Storage growth
• Security vulnerabilities
• Compliance risks and 
• Shadow IT

So, what can companies do to manage and harvest data better to reduce the stress and costs associated with Copy Data? 

Utilize Catalogic ECX to implement a software-defined Copy Data Management solution

Copy Data Management or CDM is an IT category of solutions designed to manage the creation, use, distribution, retention, and clean-up of copies of production data – or “copy data.”  

“Copy data” is the collective set of all data not currently used in production (e.g., a snapshot, backup, vault, or replica made for various IT or business functions—data recovery, Dev-Test, analytics, or other business or operational functions).

Effective Copy Data Management resolves multiple IT issues including.

1. Copy data consumes the majority of storage capacity and is growing at a multiple of the production data environment (as much as 20x)
   
   
2. Demand for access to recent copies of production data is soaring, driven both by traditional IT functions and by new business use cases
   
   
3. Until fairly recently, there have not been central solutions to manage, create, and distribute copies, leaving most IT organizations with a mish-mash of scripts and vendor tools without centralized control
   
   

With Catalogic ECX we offer complete Copy Data Management and automation

With Catalogic ECX, we ensure that the minimum amount of full copies are created and only stored for as long as needed via the businesses via SLAs.  

Via our centralized catalog, we can track all copies across the environment. Including remote sites, cloud environments, main all of the vital metadata for each copy, the lineage, location, ownership and access rights, timestamps of the copy, related copies, completion status, etc. Also, having all these metadata means we can create insightful custom reports into the copies stored within your environment. 

Everything we do in Catalogic ECX has focused on the user experience. We allow you to choose if you want to use our UI or if you facilitate Copy Data Management functions outside the UI via our API.

ECX also enables role-based access control with LDAP integration, meaning you can empower lines of business to start accessing copies themselves. Previously they had to wait for the IT department to provide access to data copies. We do this as ‘Fresh and Fast Data’ means better development results. 

We have worked with customers across the world to implement streamlined copy services, and we typically see astounding results, taking copy process that was taking typically multiple hours or even days (excluding waiting for people time) and reducing that to a matter of minutes. All this while reducing the amount of storage capacity used with space-efficient copies.

Check out this recent insightful report from Evaluator Group detailing why Copy Data Management is important and what to ask when evaluating Copy Data Management solutions. 

If you are evaluating Copy Data Management solutions or want to learn more about how Catalogic can reduce stress for your IT team via enabling effective Copy Data Management, get in touch via wbush@catalogicsoftware.com or request a free trial of ECX here

Thanks for reading and take care.