use Compress::Zlib ;
use Storable ;

my %hash = &some_data ;
my $data = pack( "u*", 
  Compress::Zlib::MemGzip( freeze \%hash) ) ;

# now you can do as you please with $data
# to unthaw:
my $hashref = thaw( Compress::Zlib::MemGunzip(
  unpack( "u", $data ) ) ) ;