5 Reasons Why Your EBS Data Footprint Is Too Big

Big data has never been bigger. IT research and advisory firm IDC estimates that, by 2020, humans will have produced 44 zettabytes (44 trillion gigabytes) of information, most of it unstructured and disorganized.

Organizations that can process and extract insights from these raw masses of data are poised to profit in the years to come — but only if they can handle their own internal data as well. Oracle EBS is one of the most popular and powerful software suites for ERP and CRM, but as time goes by you may find that your EBS storage footprint is growing out of control. Below, we’ll go over five of the most common reasons that companies find they need to slim down on their enterprise data.

1. Data Mirroring

With so much functionality packed into Oracle EBS, it’s inevitable that your data will be duplicated in some form or another. “Mirroring” is one of the most common reasons for data duplication: keeping redundant copies of a database in order to ensure continuous availability. Although mirroring is an effective strategy for protecting your enterprise data, it also takes up double the storage space.

2. Archiving

Data that you’re no longer actively using has to go somewhere, and it’s usually archived to a separate storage device. Unlike mirroring, which is explicitly performed in order to protect data and make it available, archived data is wasted space unless you plan to come back to it in the future. Without pruning your archived data at regular intervals, it will continue to grow unbounded.

3. Different Environments

Depending on your business requirements, you’ll need to create a number of different environments: development, testing, staging and replication. These environments may require you to perform a complete duplication of your production databases, even for the smallest actions. Some organizations also maintain a training environment for use in onboarding new employees, adding to the size and complexity.

4. Legal Defense

Many firms, especially those in industries that are prone to litigation, will preserve large-scale snapshots of their databases at regular intervals. These backups are intended to serve as a defense in the event that the company needs to prove that it did, or did not, store certain information during a given moment. Although these snapshots have a valuable purpose, they can also lead to a great deal of data bloat.

5. Audits and Compliance

For certain industries, such as finance and healthcare, hanging onto your data isn’t only a best practice, but also a requirement under laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. Regulatory and government agencies have different standards for how long and under what conditions enterprise data must be stored. In many cases, these requirements also include all databases that store auditing records, significantly inflating your footprint.

Final Thoughts

Whatever your reasons for having a bloated EBS footprint, the consequences can be serious. According to IT research and analysis firm Gartner, removing a single extraneous gigabyte of data can save companies up to $18,000 in the long run.

By consulting with seasoned experts in Oracle database management, you can streamline your EBS footprint and reform your processes, keeping your databases lean even as you find new sources of data. To learn more about how you can proactively reduce your EBS storage footprint, download Datavail’s new white paper, Slash Costs While Increasing Performance: Reduce Your Oracle EBS Storage Footprint.