Data Overload? Time to Archive and Breathe Easy

A growing business is exciting‌ — ‌more customers, more revenue, and, of course, more data. While data growth itself isn’t a problem, it can quickly become overwhelming without the right systems in place and lead to higher costs, sluggish systems, and difficulty staying compliant.

This is where data archiving becomes vital. By regularly relocating inactive data to a secondary storage environment, organizations can keep their orgs lean and performant, while staying on top of data retention regulations. Finding this balance between efficient data management and compliance is key to sustained growth.

The challenges of unchecked data growth

Data growth is something most businesses will experience. On average, organizations manage at least a petabyte of data, with many reaching 500 petabytes or more. To put that into perspective, a single petabyte is equivalent to about 200,000 full-length movies or around 500 billion pages of text. That’s a lot of data. 

While this data is the foundation for innovation, development, and customer service, it can also become a major bottleneck. Unchecked data growth can lead to: 

• Rising storage costs: Managing large volumes of data can be expensive. Storing all data in active environments can result in mounting expenses for high-performance storage solutions. 
• Performance degradation: As data volumes grow, system performance can suffer. Accessing and processing information from bloated databases can slow operations, reduce efficiency, and result in a poor user experience. 
• Compliance pressures: Regulations like the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and others require companies to retain specific data types for defined periods. The challenge is managing vast amounts of data while ensuring compliance. Balancing both can be difficult, but it’s crucial for avoiding penalties and maintaining trust with customers and regulators.     

The challenges of unchecked data growth create significant obstacles for organizations striving to stay agile and competitive. That’s why having an automated archiving strategy is essential.

What are the benefits of an automated data archiving solution?

A smart data archiving strategy can have a positive impact on nearly any IT and data-driven process in your organization, including:

Manage storage costs

Archiving provides a cost-effective way to manage data by moving historical datasets to more affordable storage solutions. This allows businesses to retain access to essential information without the higher costs of active storage, resulting in significant savings over time.

Boost system performance

Archiving older, less-accessed data allows businesses to reduce their database sizes, leading to faster processing speeds. This streamlined environment ensures faster application performance, quicker data retrieval, and an improved user experience for both employees and customers.

Navigate data compliance

A solid archiving strategy helps businesses comply with data retention laws and internal governance policies. Properly archived data is stored according to legal requirements, and when no longer needed, it’s securely deleted or moved to long-term storage. This reduces the risk of regulatory penalties and maintains consistent data governance.

Access archived data without compromise

One of the major benefits of automated archiving solutions, like Archive, is that archived data remains accessible. Businesses can retrieve necessary information whenever needed without overloading live systems. This balance means critical information is never out of reach, even as primary environments stay efficient.

How to get started with data archiving

Managing a growing data set begins with understanding your data architecture — how it works, how to store it, how to retain it, and how each factor impacts system performance. This foundational knowledge helps you build a strategy that delivers both efficiency and compliance.

First, identify and separate “essential” and “non-essential” categories of data for archiving. Not all data needs to be stored in active systems, and a smart strategy begins with putting data that isn’t mission-critical into longer-term storage. 

This can include old customer records, transaction histories, system logs, or outdated marketing data. Archiving this data frees up valuable resources in your active enterprise infrastructure, allowing them to be better used for other processes.

Next, you should set clear retention goals and requirements to be compliant with industry regulations and business needs. For example, financial records may need to be retained for seven years, while other data might have shorter retention periods. Automating retention rules helps maintain consistency and reduce manual effort.     

Meeting archival requirements doesn’t need to slow down system performance. In fact, regularly monitoring system performance is crucial for proactive data management. Businesses should track key performance indicators such as database query times, storage usage, and system response rates. When these metrics start to dip, it’s a sign that some of the data can be moved to long-term storage. 

Finally, implementing an archiving solution that enables compliant data storage will enhance your security posture. At a minimum, you should implement encryption and role-based access controls to help safeguard archived data against unauthorized access or tampering. Even data that is archived can still be valuable to bad actors, especially if it pertains to customer contact information and payment card details. Failing to protect this information can result in reputational damage and even fines in some instances.

Lighten the (data) load with Salesforce Archive

Archive optimizes performance by freeing up system resources and making sure business systems remain fast and responsive. With Archive, businesses can rest easy knowing their archived data is both secure and easily accessible, with audit-ready documentation that ensures compliance without compromising convenience.  

Discover how your organization can use Archive to streamline your data management and boost efficiency.