Salesforce Data Storage – An extensive chronicle of its challenges, optimization options & recommendations

According to the current industry trends, the growth of an enterprise largely depends on how it collects, stores, retains, accesses and uses its vast amounts of data. Salesforce as a CRM platform has played a vital role in the growth journey of such enterprises driving innovation, customer success and digital transformation. Salesforce, like any other platform, offers in-built storage to its customers where the data that is generated regularly can be held. This storage is segregated into three categories:

• Data Storage– Salesforce data storage includes space for accounts, campaigns, cases, contacts, custom objects, data translations, email messages, events, Google docs, leads, notes, orders, solutions, tasks, and all objects tied to Field Service Lightning enablement. Starting in late March 2019, all Salesforce editions have allocated 10 GB for data storage, plus incrementally added user storage.
• File Storage– Salesforce file storage has allocated storage space for files in attachments, files home, Salesforce CRM content, Chatter files (including user photos), the Documents tab, and the Site.com assets. Nearly all of the Salesforce editions have allocated 10 GB of file storage per Org whereas only the Essentials edition has been allocated 1 GB of file storage per org.
• Big Object Storage– There is also the recently launched Big Data-based storage option called Big Objects that are designed to hold voluminous amounts of enterprise data. Nearly all Salesforce editions have allocated storage for 1 million big object records per Salesforce Org. Also worth noting is the fact that purchasing Big Objects is comparatively cheaper than purchasing the additional Salesforce data storage.

One of the major challenges faced by a majority of the enterprises, even when they realize the significance of data for their business success, is the actual collection and storage of a large volume of data as there are various complexities involved. Some of them have been explained below:

• Limited storage space– Virtually all Salesforce editions offer a pre-designated storage space for the enterprise’s data. This space, though seems ample in the beginning, usually starts to run out after 2-3 years of use, depending on the amount and speed of data generation.
• Potentially high costs– A major chunk of the entire Salesforce expenditure is the result of the extremely high data storage costs associated with it. When the natively allocated storage space runs out, enterprises are left with no option but to purchase the extra storage, which comes at a really expensive price. In most of the cases, this is not a one-time cost due to which the expenditure increases annually.
• Reduced CRM performance– Usually copious amounts of data causes the Salesforce CRM application to become bulky and decreases its efficiency. There can be delays in processing information, generating leads, or performing any kinds of operations. This in turn can adversely affect the user experience as well.
• Compliance and governance concerns– Restricted storage space directly leads to data being stored in an unstructured manner due to which the enterprise is not really able to utilize this data to its fullest potential and lacks to meet its compliance and governance requirements.

There are several means through which the above mentioned challenges can be combated and the Salesforce data storage can be optimized to a greater potential. Here we shed light on some of them:

• Purge unnecessary data manually or automatically– One of the easiest ways to enhance the data storage is to clean up the unnecessary data either manually using simple tools or automatically through third-party solutions. A few popular manual options include Salesforce’s web-based Mass Delete Wizard and certain ETL tools like Salesforce Data Loader, DataLoader.io, and JitterBit. Likewise, several AppExchange marketplace applications can be used to remove redundant data, saving both time and manual effort.
• Purchase Additional Data Storage From Salesforce– If your enterprise isn’t at the liberty to delete unnecessary data from the system, then the second best option is to purchase additional data storage space from Salesforce. But bear in mind that such purchase will be really expensive and must be avoided, for as long as possible.
• Optimize the Salesforce application– Instead of purchasing additional storage, you can also avail higher per user data storage limits by upgrading the current edition of the Salesforce application to the Performance and Unlimited editions. But depending on the number of new licenses required to fulfill the storage demand, this option is again not very budget-friendly.
• Take a backup of the old data– Another option that can be explored in this scenario is taking backup of the system data. By taking backup, the inactive data is removed from the primary storage and moved to some secondary storage space where it can be kept till its need arises, usually in case of loss of data in primary storage due to any reason. But this again is not a very viable option as over a period of time, even the secondary storage will start to pose challenges.
• Implement an archiving strategy– One of the recent approaches to storage space optimization is long term data archiving. In this process, old inactive data is taken out of the Salesforce’s primary data storage and stored in an external storage space that is of the enterprise’s choice. But be mindful of the fact that archiving data is different from backing up the data. While backup holds a copy of the original data, the archive is the original data that is moved to some other location.

With all these different options available at hand, it can be a daunting task for Salesforce admins to figure out which option suits them the best. Here we take the liberty to recommend trying out the newest approach on the block: Salesforce Data Archiving. By means of archiving data, you can move all the historical and rarely-used but nonetheless important data from the internal data storage space to any external storage feature of your choice. This drastically reduces the storage expenditure, improves performance and boosts user experience.

DataArchiva is one such data archiving tool easily available on the Salesforce AppExchange. DataArchiva is an EXTERNAL data archiving solution that lets the Salesforce enterprise customers archive their historical data such as old emails, contacts, cases, leads, and much more automatically, making use of the custom archiving policies, and then store it in their preferred external storage system without losing out on the data integrity. Currently, DataArchiva supports several Cloud & On-premise database service platform providers like Amazon, Google, Azure, Heroku including various databases such as Postgres, Redshift, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, and more. To know more about DataArchiva, please get in touch with us.