As I was watching “Finding Dory,” I couldn’t help but start drawing parallels between the plotline of the movie and a very common scenario we see playing out at many of our customers. In both, confusion, uncertainty, and a lack of clarity are getting in the way of forward progress.
- Dory’s short-term memory is denying her from reaching her most important memories.
In “Finding Dory” there’s a strong sense of longing to be unified with other people, both loved ones and strangers. As you learn from the movie, not all strangers are helpful but some actually add value to the journey.
- Your company’s information is scattered all over the place and you have a hard time identifying where the valuable data is.
As our customers peer out into their data estate, often times it seems like the ocean, filled with the unknown. Some data could potentially be helpful and some adds no benefit. The bottom line is that most organizations don’t know what’s out there, and that can be a scary thing.
Now why is that scary? It’s because Information is exploding at a rate greater than 39% year-over-year. According to Fighting Back Against the Exponential Data Curve, many organizations believe that when they need data, they’ll be able to search through the information warehouse and locate the exact asset needed at the exact moment in time. The challenge with this approach is that information is nearly never catalogued and organized sufficiently and there are too many pieces of data covering up the information you are actually trying to find.
This situation is just like Dory’s memory, where she can’t access the memories at the exact moment in time that she wants. Her mind is disorganized and she even gets random memories at different times. It was this consistent sense of confusion in the film that drew me to this comparison between Dory and Dark Data.
According to the Veritas Global Databerg Report, 52% of enterprise data is dark. This is data whose value has not yet been identified. It may include vital business critical data as well as useless Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) data. Dark data could also contain high-risk, non-compliant data, buried deep below the surface. At the end of the day, this data will remain dark unless organizations take a proactive approach to gaining visibility into their data.
At Veritas, we offer two powerful solutions that help organizations uncover their Dark Data and start to regain control over their data footprint. Information Map and Data Insight deliver actionable intelligence about file ownership, age, and access that turn individual files from being unknown commodities to having a specific value that informs the lifecycle of that data.
Unlike Dory’s memory, you can regain control over your organization’s s data. Visit our Veritas Information Governance portfolio page for more details on how you can start this journey.
For those who haven’t watched “Finding Dory” yet, it is now available on Blu-Ray.
