The times are changing rapidly as data explosion mushrooms, but the more things change the more they stay the same. In the archiving and eDiscovery world, organizations are increasingly pushing content from multiple data sources into information archives.
Email was the first data source to take the plunge into the archive, but other data sources are following quickly as we increase the amount of data we create (volume) along with the types of data sources (variety). While email is still a paramount data source for litigation, internal/external investigations and compliance - other data sources, namely
social media and SharePoint, are quickly catching up.
This transformation is happening for multiple reasons. The main reason for this expansive push of different data varieties into the archive is because centralizing an organization’s data is paramount to healthy
information governance. For organizations that have deployed archiving and eDiscovery technologies, the ability to archive multiple data sources is the
Shangri-La they have
been looking for to increase efficiency, as well as create a more holistic and defensible workflow.
Organizations can now deploy document retention policies across multiple content types within one archive and can identify, preserve and collect from the same, singular repository. No longer do separate retention policies need to apply to data that originated in different repositories. The increased ability to archive more data sources into a centralized archive provides for unparalleled storage, deduplication, document retention, defensible deletion and discovery benefits in an increasingly complex data environment.
Prior to this capability, SharePoint was another data source in the wild that needed disparate treatment. This meant that legal hold in-place, as well as insight into the corpus of data, was not as clear as it was for email. This lack of transparency within the organization’s data environment for early case assessment led to unnecessary outsourcing, over collection and disparate time consuming workflows. All of the aforementioned detractors cost organizations money, resources and time that can be better utilized elsewhere.
Bringing data sources like SharePoint into an
information archive increases the ability for an organization to comply with necessary document retention schedules, legal hold requirements, and the ability to reap the benefits of a comprehensive information governance program. If SharePoint is where an organization’s employees are storing documents that are valuable to the business,
order needs to be brought to the repository.
Additionally, many projects are abandoned and left to die on the vine in SharePoint. These projects need to be expired and that capacity must be recycled for a higher business purpose. Archives currently enable document libraries, wikis, discussion boards, custom lists, “My Sites” and SharePoint social content for increased storage optimization, retention/expiration of content and eDiscovery. As a result, organizations can better manage complex projects such as migrations, versioning, site consolidations and expiration with SharePoint archiving.
Data can be analogized to a currency, where the archive is the bank. In treating data as a currency, organizations must ask themselves: why are companies valued the way they are on Wall Street? For companies that perform service or services in combination with products, they are valued many times on customer lists, data to be repurposed about consumers (Facebook), and various other databases. A recent
Forbes article discusses people, value and brand as predominant indicators of value.
While these valuation metrics are sound, the valuation stops short of measuring the quality of the actual data within an organization, examining if it is organized and protected. The valuation also does not consider the risks of and benefits of how the data is stored, protected and whether or not it is searchable.
The value of the data inside a company is what supports all three of the aforementioned valuations without exception. Without managing the data in an organization, not only are eDiscovery and storage costs a legal and financial risk, the aforementioned three are compromised.
If employee data is not managed/monitored appropriately, if the brand is compromised due to lack of social media monitoring/response, or if litigation ensues without the proper information governance plan, then value is lost because value has not been assessed and managed. Ultimately, an organization is only as good as its data, and this means there’s a new asset on Wall Street – data.
It’s not a new concept to archive email, and in turn it isn’t novel that data is an asset. It has just been a less understood asset because even though massive amounts of data are created each day in organizations, storage has become cheap. SharePoint is becoming more archivable because more critical data is being stored there, including business records, contracts and social media content. Organizations cannot fear what they cannot see until they are forced by an event to go back and collect, analyze and review that data.
Costs associated with this reactive eDiscovery process can range from $3,000-30,000 a gigabyte, comp... The downstream eDiscovery costs are obviously costly, especially as organizations begin to deal in terabytes and zettabytes.
Hence,
plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose and we will see this trend continue as organizations push more valuable data into the archive and expire data that has no value. Multiple data sources have been collection sources for some time, but the ease of pulling everything into an archive is allowing for economies of scale and increased defensibility regarding data management. This will decrease the risks associated with litigation and compliance, as well as boost the value of companies.
