Poor
data classification can cost companies millions of pounds, say
the organisers of this month's
Storage Expo show.
A survey conducted by Storage Expo found that one of the main
reasons companies
classify data was access control (67%).
The second reason was retention control (21%), and the third was
retrieval and discovery (12%).
Although access control may be the key reason to classifying
data, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst at CMS Watch, said companies
should place more importance on the impact of retrieval and
discovery, with costs in this area reaching £1m per terabyte of
data.
He said, "Typically 80% of e-mail data consists of duplication.
Yet any search tool has to treat each piece of data equally, thus
slowing down the process and pushing discovery costs through the
roof."
He added, "We estimate that the cost of 1GB of storage is about
10p, however the cost of legal discovery on 1GB of storage would
cost at least £1,000, so storing everything may seem cheap on the
one hand, but can become very expensive should something go
wrong."
Pelz-Sharpe will be chairing a keynote session at the show,
entitled "Email Management and Archive-How to Spend Wisely" on 16
October.
The show takes place on 15-16 October at London's Olympia.