Here’s an efficiency secret: store it smaller and save

Maybe you've been there: you've got to download a large database on your computer, but the save fails. No space left. So you spend the next twenty minutes toggling through your downloads, looking for stuff to delete. Now you've got decision fatigue. And your coffee's cold.

It's not just you. Your division manager has their own story. They've had to upgrade your organisation's cloud storage solution tier – again – because everybody's been saving bigger files, and more of them. Another £400 on the monthly expense account. And they're pretty sure that with the next hiring round, they're going to have to upgrade again. If only there were a way to rein in the spending.

The costs to the planet add up, too. The tech sector has contributed to exploding CO2 emissions. And it may be even worse than it looks on first blush. The Guardian reports that tech giants' actual data centre emissions may be as much as 7 times higher than those companies disclose. The costs to store data can't be underestimated. Cloud gateway company Nasuni estimates that humanity is producing 2.5 exabytes of data each day, and 90% of it is unstructured data – like images, video, and documents.

So what can you do? There are ways we can build sustainable practices into our data management workflows.

1. Store it smaller. Smaller files can slash your data storage footprint (and hard drive requisitions) by a factor of...well, the sky's the limit! With CompressionX, you can store your files an impressive 65% smaller than they were to start. They’ll be kept safe with state-of-the-art encryption. And with 100% lossless compression, you can store your files with confidence that they'll be just as perfect when you decompress them later.
2. Have one authoritative copy. Version control – every business’s nightmare! Storing the same file in multiple places can be costly – both in terms of money and time wasted reconciling duplicate files. Avoid excessive storage requirements across your organisation by storing it in a centralised place. Compressing it first can help make it quicker for others to access, download, and use.
3. Have a clear governance policy. Many data storage problems can be nipped in the bud by having a clear data governance policy. It'll help you know what you have, where - and this means fewer unsuccessful search-download-abandon actions across your servers.

With a few changes, you can spread speed, security, and space-saving across your organisation. Check out CompressionX for more on how you can use file compression to build cost savings into your business workflow.