Data deduplication: what it is, what it is for and how it works

The exponential growth of enterprise data poses significant challenges in terms of management and storage. According to a study by IDC, the amount of data generated globally will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025. However, it is estimated that up to 30% of this data is duplicated, causing inefficiencies, high costs and quality problems.

Data deduplication emerges as one critical solution to address this issue, enabling organizations to optimize their data management systems, reduce storage costs and improve information accuracy.

In this study, we explore in detail the meaning of the term data deduplication, how this process works, its key phases and the advantages it offers to companies in the context of modern intelligent data management.
 

What is Data Deduplication

Data deduplication, also known as “dedupe,” is the process of identifying and removing duplicate data within a system.

It consists of analyzing data to identify identical or nearly identical records and keep only a single instance of it. This process aims to reduce data redundancy, optimize storage utilization, and improve overall system efficiency.

Data duplication it can occur for several reasons, such as repeated manual entry, the integration of different data sources, or errors in the processes of acquiring this information.

Regardless of the cause, the presence of duplicate data can lead to problemi annosi such as inconsistency of information, increased costs, and decreased query performance.
 

How Data Deduplication works

The data deduplication process involves several key steps.

First, the data comes analyzed to identify duplicate records. This analysis can be based on different criteria, such as the exact equality of field values ​​or the use of approximate matching algorithms to identify similar items.

Once duplicates are identified, the system chooses arecord "master" o "survivor" which will represent the only preserved instance. Other duplicate records are marked for deletion or merging with the master record. This process can be performed automatically, based on predefined rules, or may require manual intervention to resolve ambiguous cases.

There are several data deduplication techniques, including:

• File-level deduplication
  Identify and remove duplicate files based on their contents, regardless of name or location.
   

• Block-level deduplication
  It breaks files into smaller chunks and identifies duplicate chunks, enabling more granular deduplication.
   

• Inline deduplication
  Performs real-time deduplication, during the data writing process.
   

• Post-processing deduplication
  Performs deduplication after the data is written, as a separate process.
   

The phases of Data Deduplication

The data deduplication process can be divided into several key phases.

1. Data acquisition
   Data is collected from different sources and integrated into the data management system.
    

2. Data profiling
   The data is analyzed to understand its structure, quality and potential areas of duplication.
    

3. Identifying duplicates
   algorithms and rules are applied to identify duplicate records based on specific criteria.
    

4. Duplicate resolution
   you decide which "master" record to keep and how to handle duplicates (delete, merge, etc.).
    

5. Data cleansing
   duplicates are removed or merged, leaving a clean dataset free of redundancies.
    

6. Monitoring and maintenance
   the system is monitored to identify and manage any new duplicates that may emerge over time.
    

What is Data Deduplication for?

Data deduplication offers numerous benefits to organizations managing large volumes of data:

• Reduced storage costs
  By eliminating duplicate data, you reduce the amount of storage space you need, resulting in savings on hardware and storage management costs.
   

• Performance improvement
  Smaller, cleaner datasets enable faster and more efficient queries, improving overall system performance.
   

• Greater data accuracy
  Removing duplicates ensures that data is consistent and reliable, thereby reducing errors and inconsistencies.
   

• Saving time and resources
  By automating the process of identifying and managing duplicates, you save time and free up valuable resources that can be dedicated to more strategic activities.
   

• Better decision making
  Clean, accurate data enables more reliable analysis and truly informed business decisions.
   

Connecteed as a tool for Data Deduplication

Connecteed, the professional tool for feed management with Italian Customer Service, can play a crucial role in preliminary stages of the data deduplication process. Thanks to its powerful features, Connecteed allows you to merge data from different sources, clean it, transform it through automatic rules and convert file formats.

Connecteed centralize data from heterogeneous systems, ensuring a consistent starting point for the deduplication process. The online tool's cleansing capabilities help standardize and normalize data, making duplicate identification more effective.

The platform then allows you to transform the data through predefined rules, allowing you to harmonize information coming from all channels used. This preliminary step greatly simplifies the deduplication process, since the data will already be structured in a coherent way, based on the conditions established upstream by the user.

Connecteed can export the cleaned and transformed data to standard formats such as CSV or XML, then ready to be imported into the further analysis or data visualization tools used. This seamless integration between Connecteed and the third-party tools for which this information is intended ensures an error-proof, fast and efficient end-to-end process.
 

Optimize Data Deduplication activities:

Test all the potential of Connecteed now

Data deduplication is an essential practice for ensuring the integrity, efficiency and accuracy of business data.

By removing duplicates, organizations can reduce costs, improve performance and access the full true potential of information in their possession.

Connecteed, as a feed management tool, plays a fundamental role in the preliminary stages of the process,preparing data optimally for deduplication. By adopting Connecteed and data deduplication best practices, companies can unlock the true potential of their data and gain a critical competitive advantage.

To immediately test all the potential of this tool, all you have to do is activate your Free Demo.