Struggling with High Storage Costs? Time to Get Deleting, as Study Finds up to 50% of Data Could Be Unused

Why It Matters

Eliminating ROT data delivers immediate cost savings, improves workforce productivity, and helps meet growing environmental and compliance pressures.

Key Takeaways

• Up to 50% of enterprise data is unused.
• Removing 100 TB saves ~$27.6k annually on AWS.
• ROT data hampers search and audit efficiency.
• Data deletion reduces carbon emissions from data centers.
• Legal compliance demands careful retention, not over‑digitisation.

Pulse Analysis

The surge in artificial‑intelligence workloads has pushed cloud storage demand to new heights, and many organizations now face spiralling bills. Crown Information Management’s latest report reveals a startling inefficiency: roughly 50 % of stored data provides no business value. This “ROT” – redundant, obsolete, and trivial – not only occupies costly capacity but also clutters search indexes and hampers audit trails, creating hidden productivity drains across the enterprise.

Financially, the impact is concrete. The study estimates that stripping 100 TB of dead data from an AWS Standard tier could shave $27,600 off annual fees, a figure that scales dramatically for larger data lakes. Beyond direct savings, freeing storage improves system performance, reduces backup windows, and shortens time‑to‑insight for analysts. Companies that act on these insights can reallocate budget toward innovation rather than paying for digital dead weight, a competitive advantage in today’s data‑driven markets.

Environmental and regulatory considerations further amplify the case for disciplined data hygiene. Data‑center electricity consumption is projected to double by 2030, and every gigabyte deleted translates into marginal carbon reductions. Yet firms must navigate GDPR and industry‑specific retention rules, ensuring that essential records remain protected while discarding the rest. Best practices include automated ROT detection, tiered archiving policies, and secure e‑waste recycling. By integrating these measures, organizations not only cut costs and boost productivity but also demonstrate responsible stewardship of both data and the planet.