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Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Cost of storage for ECM & DAM: Part 2

24-Aug-2009

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM)

I recently posted a piece regarding storage costs for ECM that seemed to garner some interest, so I thought I might just flesh out some of the assumptions I made in that a little further. The basic premise was that people who buy ECM and DAM systems tend to underestimate the cost of related storage, and typically do so by a wide margin. In addition to underestimating the costs, buyers typically underestimate the volume of storage required. Combined, these miscalculations can, and often do, prove to be very costly.

In my experience these miscalculations are generally due to either a misguided assumption that storage volumes and costs are falling to the point whereby they are not worth worrying about, or that the buyer has previous experience with a web content management system, and assumes that as storage was a minor issue then, so it will be a minor issue with a full blown DAM or ECM implementations. The reality is, nothing could be further from the truth.

First, some basics. Although the cost of 1GB of storage has plummeted over the years, the cost of managing the stored data has not. In fact enterprise storage costs have continued to rise year on year. It is easy, though wrong, to equate the cost of disk space with the overall cost of storage. Disk costs represent a very small part of the overall storage bill. Managing the structure, security and access to and from that stored data is what costs a lot more.

Even as disk space costs have plummeted, our appetite for filling those disks has grown at an even greater rate. ECM and DAM storage costs have risen more than most as they both manage bulky content files. The increased use of rich media, PowerPoint, Flash files, video, audio or even just the use of graphics in typical office documents has bulked up storage demands way beyond anything one could have predicted just a few years ago, lifting many multi-terabyte situations to the petabytes today.

As the sheer volume of content being stored has grown exponentially, so too has the realization that hidden amongst these volumes are actual items of real business value, and/or items that could get us into trouble if lost (or found). The need to address such related issues as backup for basic protection, disaster recovery to ensure that we can survive if everything gets hit in a single location, and of course archiving, ensures that we can separate and actively manage important content over the long term. Enterprises must do this to meet compliance and legal needs. All of these of course add considerably to costs, though they do enable content owners to sleep well at night.

Some buyers just want to push it all to "The Cloud" and if that works for them, great - but that is not necessarily a low-cost option. As a rough guide, 1 petabyte of storage will cost you around $150k per month using Amazon S3, yes, that's $1,800,000 per year. Of course one can argue that "The Cloud" does all the DR and Backup work for you so there could be cost savings there, but its still not exactly cheap. Yes I know not everyone will need a petabyte of storage, but my point remains valid, as you will likely need far more storage space than you think you do. Whether you end up with a fiber channel SAN courtesy of NetApp, Hitachi or EMC or you opt for the Cloud - you are going to pay out a lot of money.

But hold on a second: surely this all assumes that such costs are inevitable and indeed necessary, that the only error is the fact that you, the buyer, underestimated them? In fact the major error here is that most buyers of ECM and DAM systems are not thinking about using storage systems in the way they were designed to be used. Theoretically at least such systems allow you to clear out junk (irrelevant, duplicated or redundant) on an ongoing basis, and only manage key data or files. This behavior is sorely lacking from our content management routines. Moreover, better systems integrate well with most common storage options, providing fairly seamless retention and disposition management, in some cases even going so far as to help in the automation of tiered storage. But few buyers ever make any use of these features and they become little more than electronic buckets, buckets that get filled in random order.

So, what is the lesson here? Well maybe there is more than one lesson, for starters:

• You should always ensure that accurate storage calculations are an early and important of any ECM or DAM project
• Put proper content governance in place to ensure you're not paying for space you don't need (Consider that a business case for ECM and DAM can often be made simply based on the savings derived from an efficient retention and disposal process)
• Finally, the next time you hear somebody say that enterprise storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, hit them, they deserve it.