"Data is the currency of the new economy," HGST director of Asia Pacific South distribution business David Chua told iTWire.

But in a recent survey commissioned by the company almost half of respondents said they do not store all their data even though nearly nine out of ten think all data has value if it can be accessed and analysed.

710 senior IT decision makers were surveyed, so it was a reasonably large sample. But the survey only ran in China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States, so care should be taken in applying the findings locally.

Mr Chua said research published in the Harvard Business Review had found that data-based decision-making led to a 5% improvement in productivity and a 6% improvement in profitability.

The problem is that data is growing 40% a year according to IDC, so organisations need a more cost-effective yet fully accessible way of storing data, he said.

One part of HGST's response is its 'active archive' platform that combines high storage density, rapid access, and relatively low cost.

HGST Asia Pacific cloud storage and enterprise product marketing director KB Ng stressed that the active archive platform was very real, with samples already delivered to certain customers ahead of general availability in early 2015.

It will provide more than 10PB of storage per rack, giving a fivefold increase in storage density and power efficiency compared with existing products, he said.

This will mean HGST will offer the lowest total cost of ownership per petabyte, and the highest density and scalability available for object storage.

HGST is helping its customers store as much information as possible, Mr Ng said.