How does PKZIP reduce storage costs?

The common wisdom is that storage is cheap and getting cheaper. While it is indisputable that the costs of disk, tape, and other media storage have declined year on year for at least a decade, storage is not free. Moreover, the amount of data businesses retain electronically has grown at a pace that far exceeds the pace of cost reductions over the same period of time. The budgetary reality is that, while the unit cost for a gigabyte of storage has declined, storage costs are frequently the single largest line item in an organization's IT budget. This is especially true when "all-in" storage costs are considered - some experts estimate a multiple as high as five times hardware purchase price for management and support of storage.

PKZIP compression relieves this budgetary stress by requiring fewer storage resources, thereby saving money. Offering cross-platform interoperability, PKZIP allows data center managers to quickly and effectively compress data -- whether generated by productivity tools on the desktop, email on the servers, database backups from the open systems, or hierarchical data stores on the mainframe?to as little as 5% of its original size. Regardless of the cost of a gigabyte of storage, if a data file that occupied 100 units of space now occupies only 5 units of space, it is easy to see the cost and system capacity savings for IT managers and capacity planners.

As a consequence, using PKZIP throughout the enterprise can bring tremendous cost savings, in both capital expenditures and operational expenses. Existing storage capacity can serve the needs of users and critical applications for a longer period, thereby postponing (or eliminating altogether) the purchase of additional storage capacity.