Avoiding the Day of Data Reckoning

Talking to customers and prospects over the last few weeks has confirmed that the economy is still making things difficult for everyone, but there is reason for hope. I find it encouraging that buyers are still engaging with technology vendors and are actively interested in finding new technologies that do a better job of solving old problems and new problems. This is especially true where the advantage is efficiency over manual processes. Data discovery is the perfect example of this, since there are very compelling business reasons for getting it right.

The companies we have been talking to recognize that they have to control the data and content that resides within their storage and computing infrastructure. Staffing at all of these companies is thin, so the concern is that they might be forced to delay major initiatives around organizing and understanding content, because they don't have the people to handle it. Since they must address regulatory compliance and legal initiatives, they don't want to delay. They know that if a crisis (The day of reckoning) arrives, they have to show that they have secured all relevant data of certain types, or have produced all of the data that is relevant to a legal matter. These companies know that without control over content, they will have a last minute scramble where contract staff or consultants will ultimately cost more than being proactive about data discovery and management. So it is, "Pay the piper now or pay the piper lots-more later." But in the current environment, where IT departments are stuck in tight staffing situations, they feel that they have no choice but to wait for the day when management orders them to start scrambling. It's not a healthy environment, but it is the situation that many companies are finding themselves in--IT recognizes that they ought to be getting ready for the inevitable; but they just are not being allowed to invest the time.

Automated tools for data discovery become very valuable to companies in this situation--where saving human labor is a top priority. The ability to eliminate manual classification and movement of messages or documents for review and storage would empower them to achieve data discovery and management with very few human resources. That's why they are looking to new approaches, like Digital Reef, an approach that use algorithmic classification (Auto-categorization) to sort the data, allowing companies to organize all content--even content they didn't know they had. Our solution also provides them with a "single cockpit" or "single console" to tag, move or manage data (add information to the meta data, copy files from one location to another, move files from one location to another, move only one copy of duplicate files from one location to another, and convert certain document types to Adobe PDF format for viewing). All of this makes data discovery and management doable with a very lean staff and eliminates two of the scenarios worrying IT-- the legal discovery fire drill and the compliance discovery scramble.

The economy will improve when it improves. In the meantime, data stores continue to grow, IT staffing remains lean and data risk doesn't go away. The companies that see beyond today and understand the value of getting their data discovery ducks in a row, despite the current-economy, are highly likely to be the successful companies post crisis. In the meantime, we are happy to help those companies avoid the risks associated with out of control content--and avoid the data discovery day of reckoning.