Rising Cost of Data, a Sleeping Giant for UK Businesses

Seagate expands Lyve Cloud to UK, helping businesses address ‘unsustainable’ cost of data storage and management

Seagate^® Lyve™ Cloud storage as a service is expanding to the UK to help address the rising costs of data management. In a new survey (available on demand) “The UK data management costs and opportunities index, 2022 edition” from Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX), British businesses are spending an average of £213,000 per year just on storing and managing their own data. The survey reveals companies are prioritising spending on data over energy costs, as well as employee welfare and training. The findings, which come during today’s global macro-economic crisis, highlight the urgent need for businesses to rein in their data costs.

According to the 2022 Global DataSphere forecast report by IDC, 211 zettabytes of data will be generated globally in 2026. This is translating into budget headaches for British businesses. Seagate’s survey, which polled senior IT decision-makers at companies with more than 1,000 employees, reveals UK businesses are spending up to one third of their IT budgets on data storage and management alone. Over half (52%) of those surveyed describe this level of spending as ‘unsustainable.’

In addition to the financial strain these rising costs will place upon companies, UK innovation is also at stake. Digital innovation is essential to the success of businesses – unlocking that requires the ability to access and put to work all data available within an organisation. In the recent Multicloud Maturity report from Seagate we have seen that companies with a high level of maturity in storing and managing data in a multicloud bring new solutions to market 6 times faster than competitors with a lower level of maturity.

The vast majority of IT decision-makers (90%) are concerned about the rising costs, but what’s more, the majority (51%) believe that their management does not always realise the scale of the problem. Nearly two thirds (64%) of those surveyed believe that the way data storage and management is currently priced discourages innovation.

Seagate Lyve Cloud UK Expansion

The survey was commissioned by Seagate as company expands its Lyve Cloud storage-as-a-service to the UK. Seagate’s S3-compatible cloud storage offers customers a simple, trusted, and cost-efficient way to unlock the value of their massive unstructured datasets, helping to drive innovation.

Lyve Cloud reduces storage infrastructure cost and complexity which are preventing organizations from making full use of their data. By leveraging Lyve Cloud in scenarios such as data analytics, data repository for content collaboration, and backup/disaster recovery, organizations can break data silos, get insights from their data and reduce dramatically their total cost of ownership.

“UK Businesses are using and storing data at unprecedented levels and Seagate Lyve Cloud equips them with true multi-cloud flexibility, world-class security, and long-term cost predictability,” said Ravi Naik, Seagate’s executive vice president of storage services and CIO. “Companies that minimize data costs and maximize data innovation, win. Lyve Cloud empowers businesses to manage and transfer mass data easily, rapidly and securely across various storage environments unlocking significant savings and accelerating digital transformation and innovation.”

Launched in the United States in 2021, Seagate Lyve Cloud now has over 50 companies in its ecosystem network. UK customers include Twickenham Studios, Ovation, and PXGeo, which collaborate with Seagate to help businesses take full advantage of their cloud infrastructure.

“Our clients’ main pain points involve efficient data management in the multicloud. They need to access their data quickly, and also gain knowledge from this data in a cost-effective way. Lyve Cloud has all the features that we need: security, reliability, and of course, no lock-ins,” explained Mark Bashforth, CEO at Ovation Data. "Getting up and running within Lyve Cloud took only a matter of hours and it complements our existing systems. Cost is on every business leader’s mind, so having a clear line-of-sight appealed to us and we’re excited to be one of Seagate’s first customers in the UK.”

In this challenging economic environment, UK businesses now have another cost to worry about -- the unsustainable cost of data management. Companies need to optimise spending but also face the explosion of data costs -- enterprises have experienced 30% growth in data-management spending over the past year, with over half of businesses believing it will be unsustainable in 3 years, according to the Seagate study. More efficient data management is essential to cost savings, innovation, and, ultimately, winning.

For more information on how to solve your cloud infrastructure challenges with Seagate Lyve Cloud and to know more about the recent use cases, please visit: https://www.seagate.com/services/cloud/storage/

Notes to editors

In partnership with third-party research vendor Vitreous World, Seagate Technology fielded a 9-question survey among 502 UK IT decision-makers in businesses with more than 1,000 employees, from 6th -13^th October 2022.

About Seagate

Seagate Technology crafts the datasphere, helping to maximize humanity’s potential by innovating world-class, precision-engineered mass-data storage and management solutions with a focus on sustainable partnerships. A global technology leader for more than 40 years, the company has shipped over three billion terabytes of data capacity. Learn more about Seagate by visiting www.seagate.com or following us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and our Blog.

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