How Big Objects can solve the Salesforce data storage challenge?

What are Big Objects? And How Is It Solving the Age-Old Salesforce Data Storage Problem?

Salesforce states: “In this new era of AI & Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise.” This assertion highlights the critical importance of data as a strategic asset, yet it also illuminates a persistent challenge: how effectively you can store or manage volumes of data within Salesforce.

Enter Big Objects—Salesforce’s solution to the long-standing challenge of data storage. Traditional Salesforce data models often struggle with scalability, leading to cumbersome archives and performance issues. In contrast, Big Objects are engineered to store and manage massive volumes of data as archives on the Salesforce platform.

This allows organizations to archive Salesforce data from other objects or integrate large datasets from external systems for a comprehensive view of their customers. With consistent performance across 1 million, 100 million, or even 1 billion records, Big Objects provides the agility needed to keep customer insights accessible and actionable. In this blog, we will explore the functionality of Big Objects and discuss how they can transform your Salesforce data management strategy, empowering your organization to thrive in a data-driven environment.

What are Big Objects?

As a Salesforce user, you know all about standard objects, custom objects, and external objects. You are pretty well aware of how these objects help you control and manipulate data so you can do some amazing innovations with your org or external systems. In today’s era of big data, every business often finds themselves with a huge volume of data. In most of the cases, too much data brings too many dilemmas. Performance issues, storage challenges, complexities in adhering to compliance and audit requests, and much more.

Unlike traditional relational databases, Big Objects are non-transactional and focus on ensuring a consistent and scalable experience. Notably, when you insert an identical Big Object record multiple times, only one record is created, enabling idempotent writes—a key difference from standard Salesforce Objects, which create a new record for each insertion request.

Big Objects is Salesforce’s big data solution which allows you to store and manage a massive amount of data (billions of records or more) within the Salesforce platform. The performance will not take a hit and it will be consistent with easy accessibility through a standard set of APIs to your org or external system.

There are two kinds of Big Objects: Standard Big Objects & Custom Big Objects

Aspect

Standard Big Objects

Custom Big Objects

Definition

Pre-defined by Salesforce

Defined and deployed by the user in Setup

Examples

Field History Archive

Historical Inventory Levels

Customization

Not customizable

Fully customizable (fields, definitions, index)

Availability

Always available

Created as needed by the organization

Data Storage

For specific functions like auditing

For unique organizational needs

Query Ability

Limited to defined functions

Query capabilities depend on indexed fields

Use Cases

Compliance with regulations
Long-term field history storage

360° customer view
Auditing and tracking
Historical data archiving

Performance

Optimized for specific standard functions

Designed for performance in custom applications

Integration

Integrated with Salesforce products

Extends functionality of the Lightning Platform

Moreover Salesforce offers an option to create custom big objects from set-up. If you aren’t comfortable using the Metadata API, you can create a big object in Setup, define its fields, and build the index that defines how the big object is queried.

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Big Objects Use Cases

A Salesforce user can bring a lot of innovations with Big Objects. When data has been brought from various systems and storage solutions to the Salesforce ecosystem, wonders can happen with your data. The same huge volume of data can help you grow your business at an exponential rate. No need to have integrations with external systems or maintain that for a long period of time. Big Objects can be used for three specific use cases.

360-degree view of the customer
Auditing & Tracking
Historical Archive
Train AI Agents in Salesforce
Run Analytics on Archives

While a 360-degree view of your customers can help you optimize your customer journeys and get a comprehensive view of your customers, this can help you pull all the data from various sources and systems to one single integrated Big Objects database. Auditing and Tracking will help you keep a long-term view of your user’s Salesforce usage for analysis or compliance purposes. This feature is extremely useful for heavily regulated industries like financial, healthcare, government etc. But, the real perk that Big Objects offers is the historical archive option which can potentially solve the age-old Salesforce data storage problem.

Why Big Objects is the Best Answer to Salesforce Data Storage Challenges?

Standard or external objects are great when you are dealing with millions of rows of data. However, when you reach a level of billions of rows in Salesforce, you will need additional storage space. And Salesforce’s additional storage costs plenty.

Big Objects offers a solution or storage option where you can store all your less accessed historical data that you are not using anymore. Your historical data will be well within your Salesforce ecosystem without being exposed to external systems. Plus it’s cost-effective and offers you an advantage of having a huge volume of your historical data archived yet readily available. In other systems, you might need to have integrations and have to maintain them. If you are from data-sensitive industries like healthcare, government, financial, etc. you would never like to compromise the security of your data. In that case, Big Objects is the solution that you need as it is a giant basement for data storage on the Salesforce platform.

Deleting data is no longer an option, especially when facing regulatory scrutiny. By archiving your old data securely and at scale in Big Objects, you not only meet compliance requirements but also open up valuable opportunities for AI. Historical archives can provide rich datasets for training AI agents with real data sets to give customers a more personalized experience while interacting. This further allows businesses to run predictive analytics and insights that drive informed decision-making. So, how are you leveraging this archived data enhance your AI initiatives and help you navigate regulatory challenges more effectively?

Data Archiving Solutions Powered by Big Objects

Big Objects is a storage option. But you need a solution that can archive your historical data and keep it securely in the Big Objects. DataArchiva is the first native Salesforce data archiving solution powered by the Big Objects. By periodically archiving your historical data, DataArchiva can potentially save 80%+ of your data storage costs. Your application performance will never take a blow and you can store billions of records for years. Get a free product datasheet on Big Objects Archiving.

With a customer base spanning across the globe from various industries, DataArchiva is the one-stop solution for all your Salesforce data archival needs. To know more, do get in touch with our expert today.

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DataArchiva is an enterprise data management application built for Salesforce that offers complete data management solutions including archive, backup, and seeding.