Data virtualizer Actifio said it has invented a service that can save the world US$46bn on wasted storage resources.

Actifio Sky is a cloud-based data vaulting service the company claims can save company data center operators from needless replication of production data by improving management techniques through virtualization of storage.

According to Actifio founder and CEO Ash Ashutosh, many companies have multiple departments creating their own copies of company data, for their own test systems.

Actifio quotes a study by research firm IDC which found that on average 65% of external disk storage capacity is used to store copies of production data.

This surplus of data is created for the development of different applications and used as companies create snapshots, clones, replicas, archival and backup data.

This is becoming more of a problem as companies strive to meet tighter regulations governing data protection and disaster recovery and provide data for analytics and reporting purposes, IDC EMEA software program director Carla Arend said.

Actifio claims to have obviated this need for mass replication by combining copy data virtualization, storage efficiency and application-aware data management services in its new Sky product family.

Founder Ashutosh told FOCUS that many data centers could shrink the amount of data they need to a 20th of their current size.

“Not only will this save a lot of money, it will allow systems to run a lot quicker,” Ashutosh said.

Initially Actifio shrunk data using its CDS appliance, which it claims can support a wide range of platforms, applications and uses cases.

The appliance runs on Windows, Linux, AIX, Unix and VMWare, works with SQL, Oracle, Exchange, Sharepoint and SAP and can be used as a backup, snapshot, development and testing, compliance or analytics tool.

It is also earmarked for use as a business continuity and disaster recovery tool, according to Ashutosh.

The new Actifio Sky offering will make deployment easier and more flexible, Ashutosh said.

The system uses data vaulting techniques running in the Cloud.