May 05, 2009
Why IT should start throwing data away
Storage sprawl is unsustainable, and keeping it all is risky anyhow. Good data-retention policies let enterprises delete data with less risk
41 RecommendationsIt can be a storage nightmare: Given expanding regulatory requirements and the key role that electronic records now play in lawsuits, some enterprises are saving every bit of data they have, just to be safe. As a gauge of storage demand, IDC says the total amount of disk storage shipped last year grew 40.5 percent from 2007.
Sure, storage media are getting less expensive. The cost of a gigabyte of disk storage fell more than 27 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to IDC. But with the storage requirements of average enterprises rapidly growing, keeping it all forever can create long-term management challenges and lead to headaches when something needs to be found. Analysts, attorneys, and vendors say enterprises are better off getting rid of some data -- but doing it judiciously. For IT departments, that means planning, carefully executing, and not going it alone.
"More companies are sensitive to the fact that we can't just keep throwing storage at the issue," says IDC analyst Rick Villars. Letting fast-growing data stores build up year after year isn't sustainable, he says. Companies that save everything are often those that aren't sure what needs to be saved or deleted, he adds -- a sign that they're setting themselves up for trouble.
On top of the price of disks, tapes, networks and management, piling up too much data can come back to haunt a company in case of a lawsuit. It may cost $1 million to find and compile the data requested in "e-discovery," the process of collecting electronic data as evidence, says Andrew Cohen, vice president of e-discovery and compliance at EMC.
Those who've studied this dilemma recommend a variety of steps to make sure that a company is neither saving too much nor endangering itself by improperly deleting information. There are technologies out there to help, but it also takes human input, they note.
The data-storage problem
Every organization needs to save information for its own purposes, such as institutional memory, transaction lookup and analysis, and so on. Plus, regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require enterprises to save certain kinds of content for a prescribed period. And more such regulations are in the works, notes Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Brian Babineau. "If you're in business, you're going to be regulated somehow," he says.
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BigRonG
6-May-09 11:01am
Following this advice requires two activities that businesses find difficult - thinking and hiring. Adding data management responsibilities to an already overloaded IT staff has been the normal response in the companies I know. It is much easier to simply put stuff on disk/tape/DVD than to think about it. It is at least an order of magnitude easier than fighting through another position to manage the process (including the training of users that must go with it). While the advice is sound and well meaning, in today's sinking economy it is almost 100% ignorable. I have sat in many high-level meetings where the discussion was 'risk management' (i.e. how much will the settlement cost if they do find something and what can we negotiate them down to and what if we just say 'it was accidentally deleted by so-and-so who isn't here anymore'). Until that mindset changes, policies won't change.
mr_smooth1958
6-May-09 12:47pm
1 reply
1 reply
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. IT shouldn't be throwing anything away, unless IT is also the creator and owner of the data. As a statistician who has often had to deal with IT people who thought things like, "If you haven't used a file in over a year you don't need it anymore," I don't want IT throwing anything away without talking to me first. I have a lot of files, emails, etc. that I will never want to throw away, for example, historical data series that actually become more valuable as more years accumulate.
On the other hand, as a user, I recognize my responsibility not to hang onto everything just because it's easier than thinking about what I really need to keep. IT by itself should never have sole responsibility for data management because knowledge of the value of the data lies with its owner, not IT.
Linguistic
14-May-09 9:41am
mr_smooth1958, you are one of two problems. You point out that IT shouldn't throw anything away. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong you say. Visualize this: Every 'bean counter' I know is a paper mill and a pencil and eraser expert. It takes a pencil to make corrections and an eraser to correct a wrong thus creating more and more unformatted data that rarely is used again.
The other problem is your IT shop by allowing you to keep all this data I call junk. Perhaps it had some value at a single moment but it is never used again because it has been changed so many times. You most probably find that the old data you have been using is old thus you create a newer version of it; consequently, you have 'old, old' and 'new, old'. Do you ever delete any?
You see, in order to have a good handle on your own data, you have to explain IT what you need; don't rely on IT to know or to offer you any advice on how to manage it. Times have changed and IT people are under the gun trying to keep up with everyone's demands. They don't have the time to nurture you.
On the other hand, for the reasons I've explained above, their own paractitional integrity has changed; they lack the proper organization and knowledge of secured and tight practices. There are methods to easily collect the characteristics of data as it relates to your business and requires some time; this will exponentially benefit you later. The only sacrifice you make is allowing for this time and force IT to conduct the Business Modeling Process Methodology and set up stewartship of your data. I bet that if you go back and count current costs of processing data, storage and finding current data, you will realize that you are paying about 800% for what you own, and getting less than 20% on payback -- the old traditional fact that organizations data wealth is in the 20/80% range; 20% of actual data to 80% of excess data and likewise cost of keeping these data.
I hope I explained it without offending.
Linguistic.
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