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The importance of compression and storage
Certain mailing software comes packaged with lots of capabilities. Companies using certain CASS certified software have unrivaled control with the ability to easily update mailing addresses, craft label designs and generate postal reports.
However, there is one important aspect of this software that should not go unnoticed: deduplication technology. Best of all, it comes bundled in the certain software packs.
Compression
To get into the super technical aspects, data deduplication is a specialized data compression technique, but it is not to be confused with compression, though both are important. Data compression is storing data in formats that typically require less space. There are two certain types of compression: lossy and lossless. Lossy compression is when some data is lost because redundancies are eliminated. Lossless compression is when no data is lost, but the tradeoff is that space is only reduced by about 50 percent compared to lossy.
Unlike compression, which is aimed at saving data, deduplication eliminates redundant data. Data deduplication is particularly helpful for companies utilizing bulk mailing software or any types of mail verification.
Storage options
For specific companies that handle large volumes of addresses, this type of redundant data come in the form of repeat addresses, multiple entries of the same mail recipient and other redundancies. Furthermore, this process can be used for backups and data recovery applications. The repeat data is taking up storage, and storage costs money. Enterprise data storage costs more than consumer storage models. Cloud service is theoretically an option due to the many platforms available to choose from and their low costs. However, some companies may be hesitant to store large amounts of data - sensitive and nonsensitive - in the cloud. The technology is far more stable and secure than in years past, and many times it is simply a matter of preference.
In 2013 EMC, a computer storage corporation released a report surveying over 800 IT professionals and managers from various companies. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said managing storage was their biggest challenge.
Data storage is an expensive endeavor, no matter the size of the business or number of employees. Those factors, along with enterprise preferences such as options for online storage, backup, archiving and disaster recovery all lead to expensive up-front costs, usually thousands of dollars.
Deduplication is a technique that every business should consider. Some powerful mailing software already comes packaged with this ability, though it also important to implement compression on the server side.
