The more information there is, the more it costs to maintain. Although always an important consideration, current financial uncertainty has elevated cost control to the top of IT management‟s priority list, creating an imperative for IT organizations to optimize environments and processes and wring out cost savings where possible. Importantly, cost reduction and efficiency cannot be gained at the expense of providing high levels of service—especially when it comes to protecting the information that drives the business.

Deduplication is one of the few IT solutions that cuts costs quickly and improves service levels. With it, organizations can reduce storage expenses without compromising data protection. It can also help align IT with business priorities—which 61% of IT executives said was their top management priority in 20096—by driving green and data center consolidation initiatives. Now that deduplication has proven itself out over the last few years, enterprise-class organizations are more widely adopting it. For these reasons, ESG believes CIOs and IT executives should look to deduplication for cost reduction projects in their environments.