“Bigger isn’t always better”. Jokes aside, there is some truth to this statement. When people hear these words “Big Data”, many think to call it a joke and mess around with all the lifted truck owners, bigger boats, or corporations that attempt to create a monopoly. We must remember that the goal of a company is to make money, at least if they are for-profit. Sure, they may have another agenda that they point out to the world whether it be to end child labor, save the trees, come up with alternative energy sources, and now even creating a new form of food grown in labs. In the end, we’re all here to put bread on the table.
In the US, everything is bigger. Bigger portion sizes, larger cars, louder lifestyles. However, the focus has been pushed away from quality into quantity. How did bigger become better? Well, it’s been that way for thousands of years. Territory was a large proponent of this notion. “I have more land than you” or “my sword and armor are bigger than yours”. We are just now realizing as a society that not all big things are good. Bigger is NOT always better. Especially when it comes to your data.
Sure, it’s nice to be able to go back on all the years of data you’ve collected over the course of your business operations, but nobody likes a data hoarder. When you think about it in this respect, you’ll notice that it’s only useful to keep around data that is useful and readable. For example, when looking at previous customer transactions or business purchases, would you really want to keep every single transaction down to the minute detail? Or a general overview? Of course, your retention policies may require you to keep things for a certain amount of time, but after that, it is basically sitting there collecting dust.
Data Archiving
Effective data archiving is one of the simplest ways to break free from the “bigger is better” mindset. Instead of pouring money into endlessly expanding storage, companies can strategically move inactive or low-value data into secure, low-cost archive environments. This keeps core systems lean, fast, and efficient, because let’s face it, your production database shouldn’t be a museum of every transaction your business has ever made.
By reducing system bloat, organizations see faster reporting, smoother application performance, and significantly lower infrastructure costs. In other words, archiving isn’t just about storing old information, it’s about optimizing the data you actively rely on.
Beyond performance and cost savings, archiving strengthens governance and compliance efforts. Most companies don’t realize that keeping unnecessary data can actually be a liability rather than an asset. Properly archived data is organized, searchable, and retained only for the legally required amount of time, protecting businesses from compliance risks and accidental data exposure. At the same time, it improves trustworthiness by ensuring that what remains in your active systems is accurate, relevant, and current.
Archiving creates a healthier data ecosystem, one where quality wins over quantity, and where “smaller” actually means smarter, safer, and more strategic.
Data Needs
Machines are the most impressive they’ve ever been, there is no slowing down, and its staggering how fast they’ve advanced to the point where we are teaching AI to play ping pong. The good news is that Auritas has proprietary tools to deal with your data needs. Now, it’s not enough to just do one and done archiving initiative. You will be right where you started in no time if you go in with that mentality. It’s important to consider organizing your data and setting in place certain policies or rules to properly manage your data.
What Comes Next?
The first step is to assess your database, take a look into your tables and see where you can reduce size. A data volume assessment is where companies start their archive journeys to achieve this success.
Learn about the complimentary data volume assessment and get your results in just one week.
