IMPROVE YOUR DATA MANAGEMENT

Transcription

1 IMPROVE YOUR DATA MANAGEMENT IQ In this short guide, we ll help you assess and accelerate your approach to data management. SEE INFORMATION DIFFERENTLY

2 ASSESS YOUR APPROACH THE PACE OF REGULATORY CHANGE IS ACCELERATING, AND COSTS RELATED TO LITIGATION CONTINUE TO RISE. With regulatory rules constantly shifting, and the increasing trend towards keeping more customer and operational data each year, many organisations are putting themselves at risk. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: Inside your organisation, who is charged with staying current on evolving regulatory rules governing information? Government regulation costs businesses 80 billion a year, according to research by the Institute of Directors (IoD). How do you document, maintain and update your data retention policy? If you had six weeks to satisfy the e-discovery component of an upcoming legal case, would you be ready in time? Get more insights and data management best practices for avoiding costs related to regulatory fines and litigation expenses. ness/ /regulation-costs-uk-businessess- 80bn-a-year.html

3 ACCELERATE YOUR STRATEGY GET RAPID ACCESS TO YOUR MOST CRITICAL INFORMATION. s, social media, unstructured content, financial transactions and other forms of information are piling up throughout your organisation and increasing your risk for regulatory fines and legal penalties. Sophisticated archiving tools let users quickly search files, and other documents related to specific topics. Creating a smart strategy around tape-based archiving and restoration can help you avoid these pitfalls. Archiving the data you don t use on a daily basis improves your ability to comply with regulatory rules and makes e-discovery a less painful process. Moreover, a tape-based approach means significant savings over more costly disk-based alternatives. WAYS TO GET UP TO SPEED: Designate a point person to oversee regular policy updates. Review and refine your e-discovery process on a regular basis to stay current with shifting rules. Convey important changes in your data management policy to the overall organisation through regular s, newsletters or other forms of communications.

4 ASSESS YOUR APPROACH DATA GROWTH IS TAKING A TOLL ON BUDGETS AND HAMPERING PRODUCTIVITY. Storage is growing by more than 0% each year and putting more stress on budgets. Managing this mountain of data can also hinder employee productivity, as workers must spend more time digging for information and less time on innovation. Each terabyte of storage also generates.5 to 6 terabytes of copies for backup purposes. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: How recently has your organisation updated its storage, backup and archive plans? Do you know what percentage of your IT budget is dedicated to data management? Do your colleagues spend an inordinate amount of time searching multiple systems to find the data they need to get their jobs done? Discover new ways to improve productivity and control your data management budget. ESG. Backup and Archive Convergence Trends. April 04. Buffington and Keane, Archiving and Backup Best Practices, ESG, 04.

5 ACCELERATE YOUR STRATEGY INTELLIGENT DATA MANAGEMENT CAN EASE THE BUDGET BURDEN AND BOOST PRODUCTIVITY. Managing and storing information will eventually overwhelm your IT budget. Partnering with a third party to fine-tune the balance between archiving and backup can help prevent you from drowning in your own data. By archiving the right information, you can reduce the strain on your production servers and storage systems, minimise the time of your backup cycles, cut costs and boost the overall efficiency within your IT organisation. Moving the right data offsite will also pay productivity dividends. Your IT staff and line-of-business employees will have less data to store, manage and search locally. And with sophisticated retrieval mechanisms, your archived information is only a few clicks away when you need it. WAYS TO GET UP TO SPEED: Adopt a smart archiving strategy so your on-site information is readily accessible and, therefore, more valuable to your business. Track your IT spend on data management over several quarters and look for ways to alleviate that burden by outsourcing certain services, such as backup or disaster recovery readiness. Explore the benefits of a managed archiving service that can intelligently store and restore your critical data quickly.

6 ASSESS YOUR APPROACH MORE DATA MEANS YOUR IT TEAMS HAVE MORE TO MANAGE AND PROTECT. Collecting and utilising information is a business imperative, but keeping the wrong data can put enormous pressure on your IT staff. You may need to hire experts for particular systems or invest in specialised platforms. Moreover, cyber threats are on the rise with 8% of large organisations and 60% of small organisations reporting a breach in The more information you store on site, the greater the potential damage from hackers. In 04, the UK government spent 00m on cyber security. 4 QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: Are you aware of how much time and effort goes into managing and storing your data? Do you need to hire certain skill sets just to deal with aging data systems? Who s in charge of keeping your data security policies up to date? Learn more about your options for effectively staffing IT to manage your data growth. 4

7 ACCELERATE YOUR STRATEGY OFFLINE AND OFFSITE DATA STORAGE OFFERS EVERGREEN TECHNOLOGY AND ADDED SECURITY. Strategically moving certain data sets offsite will give your IT leaders more time to focus on core business initiatives. Instead of worrying about upgrading storage hardware and systems, they can rely on an expert partner to supply the latest storage technology and best practices. The right blend of tape, disk and cloud backup can help you optimise your resources and keep your data secure. This benefit also extends to the realm of information security. Data breaches continue to dominate the headlines, making an offsite storage approach a far safer alternative to keeping your data in house where it can be more easily corrupted or stolen by hackers. WAYS TO GET UP TO SPEED: Survey your IT leadership to better understand the opportunity costs associated with allocating staff to data management. Calculate your annual expenditure on legacy data management systems (including maintenance, skill sets necessary to operate them and other costs) and compare the results to the cost of an offline/offsite solution. Develop a systematic way to track security policies and delegate the authority to update those policies to a point person or small team.

8 ASSESS YOUR APPROACH YOUR HARDWARE AND PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE COULD BE COSTING YOU MORE THAN YOU REALISE. While we tend to think of information as intangible, the recent, rapid expansion of data continues to create a need for more hardware. Big Data benefits rely on collecting and analysing massive stores of information, which means adding servers and storage devices. All of this equipment needs to be powered, cooled and maintained. As you collect and store more data, you ll need to factor in expenses related to property whether it s in the form of new climate-controlled server rooms or entire data centres. Data may be an invisible asset, but processing, maintaining and keeping it drives the need for tangible and costly hardware and systems. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: What is your average annual budget for servers, storage and related hardware? How much of last year s budget was connected to powering and cooling your IT infrastructure? How much time and budget does your IT staff spend on reconfiguring existing buildings or leasing new space to accommodate your data retention strategy? Examine alternative strategies that can help reduce these costs.

9 ACCELERATE YOUR STRATEGY DIMINISH THE DEMANDS THAT DATA PUTS ON YOUR HARDWARE, POWER AND COOLING SYSTEMS. While there s no turning back the tide of data growth, it is possible to intelligently manage the tangential costs related to powering, cooling and property. By shifting your backup and archive processes to an offsite partner, you can reduce the load on your existing servers and physical infrastructure and lower energy-related costs. Rapid data expansion also means that your software and hardware are working harder than ever before. The more data you keep in house, the faster your gear will need maintenance and eventual replacement. You may also incur costs related to recycling and secure destruction of equipment. Moving this responsibility to an expert partner will help you focus more of your budget on key business initiatives. WAYS TO GET UP TO SPEED: Calculate your IT budget dedicated solely to hardware and compare this to the cost of outsourcing your data backup and archive processes. Run several what if? scenarios that show the results of reducing your spend on power, cooling and property. Make sure your recycling and destruction policies satisfy the latest industry standards and aren t costing more than they should.

10 Read more about minimising the effects of the data explosion by downloading the ebook: The Hidden Costs of Data Management. Smart Strategies to Avoid the Pitfalls of the Keep Everything Culture. Please visit our website, or call us at , to learn about the many ways Iron Mountain can help you answer your critical data management questions. ABOUT IRON MOUNTAIN Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) provides information management services that help organisations lower the costs, risks and inefficiencies of managing their physical and digital data. Founded in 95, Iron Mountain manages billions of information assets, including backup and archival data, electronic records, document imaging, business records, secure shredding and more, for organisations around the world. Visit the company website at for more information. 05 Iron Mountain Incorporated. All rights reserved. Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the UK and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.