infoTECH Feature

April 09, 2015

Seeing the Light: How File Analysis Tools Can Unleash the Light in Dark Data

By TMCnet Special Guest
Nizar Elfarra , Pre Sales Director at CommVault Systems

Dark data is a relatively new term to the industry, defined by Gartner “as the information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes (for example, analytics, business relationships and direct monetizing).”  Almost all organizations have volumes of dark data stored away in dusty vaults and off-site storage facilities that is historically unaccounted for, unmanaged, and undervalued.  However, modern day information sharing with analytics is bringing the reign of dark data into the spotlight; mobility trends mean that users can create and share at will through a range of devices, including smart phones, laptops and tablets.

Many organizations are discovering that they lack both the policy and technology needed to efficiently manage data outside of the corporate data center.  Additionally, the growth of data – and big data especially – is causing enterprises to finally look to address the issue of dark data, if only to curb mounting storage costs.

Stepping into the light

Tackling dark data can be intimidating – even to the most accomplished of CIOs. Organizations have very little awareness of the location, volume, composition, ownership, risk and business value of their unstructured data. Based on the complexity associated with managing dark data, Gartner (News - Alert) recommends that “organizations should review the scope of their unstructured data problems by using file analysis (FA) tools to understand where dark unstructured data resides and who has access to it.” FA differs from traditional storage reporting tools because the technology doesn’t just report on simple file attributes, but can also provide critical contextual information; with the ability to analyze, index, search, track, report on file megadata and even content.

Reducing the risk of the unknown

FA tools applied to dark data provide business value in a number of ways, one of which is by helping organizations reduce risk. By identifying which files reside where, and who has access to them, FA tools introduce an element of control. They can also help organizations make more informed decisions around prioritizing their unstructured data management needs for classification and information governance, providing insights in setting retention policies for data movement. Many FA tools also offer reporting capabilities that help define these retention policies; according to Gartner, “The value of reports in FA tools is that they can be used to determine policy and strategy in areas such as access, retention and location.”

The real cost of keeping everything

IT administrators often struggle with having little to no insight into what data is being created; limited control over how it is being stored; and almost no understanding of its business value.  When it comes to information lifecycle governance, more often than not, organizations choose to lean on cold storage tape vaults to keep every scrap of data due to a paralyzing fear that they may throw away something of value. Studies from the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Counsel suggest that 69 percent of a company’s stored data has absolutely no value to the organization. In essence this means that organizations could be spending up to 20 percent of their annual budget on storing data that has gone stale, with virtually no ROI. When it comes to getting to grips with the mammoth task of dark data, FA tools deliver enterprises with the information required to ‘clean up’ legacy and current data, by identifying which data can be moved to lower cost storage, and which can be deleted.

Defining the value of business data

The key to satisfying the need to hoard information, as well as those who might leverage it for the business, is to first identify what data has value for which part of the organization, and for how long, so that it can be leveraged. Once data has been evaluated and indexed properly, organizations can better determine how and where to store that data – whether it’s locally, in the cloud, or using a combination of solutions. The classification process, enabled by FA tools, can also support a well-defined data strategy and be used to enforce information governance policies. Although as Gartner highlights, less than 1 percent of organizations manage their unstructured data today, by 2018 that figure is expected to increase up to 25 percent. Budget implications will drive the need for data management policy and data classification. Automated classification will play an increasingly integral role in the implementation of data classification policies, which will ultimately lead to a more streamlined approach and cost savings. 

Supporting e-Discovery

Without FA tools, it can be extremely labor-intensive to sift through the masses of irrelevant information contained within dark data. This ‘run around’ either consumes IT management’s time and budget, leaving less bandwidth for immediate business needs, or requires a costly outsourced response. FA tools ultimately allow for faster location of data. In a corporate landscape, where the risks associated with locating necessary data in the event of a breach or in response to legal action are significant, e-Discovery benefits are expected to drive the adoption of FA as companies begin to address their dark data.

The main challenge organizations face in adopting FA is that they are reluctant to finally face the abyss that dark data represents. But IT management must bear in mind that at its core, dark data represents untapped opportunities to transform the business, and this can only be realized through a combination of efficient migration, or deletion, and content-aware retention. Once this process is started, the benefits can be seen almost immediately in terms of cost savings and resource reduction, as well as business insight via e-Discovery processes. FA tools can and will assist organizations to take action on dark data to ‘unleash the light’ within. As word spreads on the ROI potential of such tools, we will see these tools used more and more frequently.

About the Author: Nizar Elfarra is Pre-Sales Director at CommVault . He has rich technical experience in data management. Prior to joining CommVault, Nizar held senior technical positions at EMC (News - Alert), Nortel, Sun Microsystems and Symantec. 




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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