In recent years, the amount of data companies own has increased to unimaginable levels. By 2010, a recent IDC survey suggests, the digital world will comprise of over 988 billion gigabytes of information; not all of it will be business data, admittedly, but that is still a staggering six times more than we have today.

For companies, the business value of the data they generate and collect is incalculable. It provides them with the operational information they need to drive efficient business processes and maintain productivity. It allows legal obligations to be satisfied. And the knowledge assets it holds support business decisions crucial to their future success.

But the sheer volume of data presents, in many cases, a major data management challenge. For that reason, experts at Logicalis have developed for their clients, a four-point plan for creating a data management solution that delivers real business value and, at the same time, encourages the best practice that underpins many of today's compliance regulations.

1. Identify - All data is not equal. You need to be clear about what data is important, why, and to whom or what. By classifying your data according to its value, and examining how people and processes use it, we can determine how it should be managed and retained.
2. Manage - The next step is to capture, organise and index all your paper and electronic information so that you can make it instantly available, in the right form.
3. Share - We can help you create a consolidated, manageable data repository that any authorised user can access in order to perform their required tasks using business intelligence tools to mine, analyse and report on information it holds.
4. Protect - The information audit carried out during the Identify stage, as well as helping to assess the best types of storage solutions to use, will also make sure safeguards are put in place to protect your data.

Your Comments and Questions

Jan Zelezinski, 6 months ago

Amanda, I think you've hit the nail on the head in that there is a drop in the amount of paper data we produce and it's for two reasons. First, it's a "green" issue that we can all have an imediate impact on and second it's easier to send someone an email with an attachment than it is to print and post it. However the problem with electonic data is that we don't clear out the old data as we did with the piles of paper docs as we used to do and on a regular basis. This leads to increasd disk storage and management issues but worst we can't sort the wheat from the chaff and keep the relevent data that gives an organisation that business value. So tools that help to migrate and eventually dispose of data are the way in the electronic world that we handle the old manual process of shredding paper docs for disposal in the recycle bin. Electronic data needs power and that's the BIG datacentre issue of today !!!

Amanda Smith, 7 months ago

It's certainly clear organisations are creating more digital data, but have you seen a concurrent decrease in the amount of paper data they create - or are both growing exponentially? Obviously the two types of data have different storage and security requirements, but I know that I, for one, am definitely forsaking more physical data in favour of creating a digital record instead, nowadays, and I'm interested to find out if this is a general trend in the market.

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