Zero-Copy Data Sharing: How Modern Enterprises Eliminate Duplicate Storage Costs

Zero-copy data sharing allows systems and users to access data at its original location rather than maintaining separate replicated copies, aiming to reduce storage expenses, synchronization overhead, stale data, and cross-environment transfer costs in hybrid estates. The approach is straightforward within a single vendor platform but becomes more difficult across on-premises infrastructure, multiple clouds, sovereign deployments, and different storage or catalog technologies, where interoperability, network latency, and governance must be addressed. Citing a 2026 Forrester report estimating that 35% of enterprise data exists in duplicate, the discussion argues that AI and agentic workloads increase the need for real-time, governed access because they rely on more frequent and broader data consumption than traditional reporting. Effective hybrid zero-copy architectures require decoupled compute and storage, compatible open formats or interfaces, centralized policies enforced at the source, visibility into cross-environment use and costs, and clear plans for source outages and selective caching. Although zero-copy sharing can reduce standing copies and associated storage or egress from data movement, remote queries may still incur network charges and perform less efficiently than local copies.

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