Managing the digital content explosion 2 April, 2007 By Paul Weinberg

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"If we were to save all of it, we would not have enough storage capacity. The question then comes down to be -- do we really want or need to save all of it, stated David Reinsel, program director for storage research at IDC.

One finding in the report is that about a quarter of organizational information lies outside the data center.

The explosion in digital content "expands" the role of the data center, Reinsel explained. "What we see in the future is that not only do storage requirements increase but the role of the datacenter [as the hub]."

"The data center is becoming the custodian for all the digital information. It is responsible for preserving the information, for protecting it from unauthorized access, making sure that it is delivered and that it is always available, at any given time. So that, all of the devices that are hooked up to this network are either creating or requesting information."

IDC and EMC project that in 2007 the amount of information created will surpass for the first time the storage capacity available. Both stressed this is not a time to panic.

"You can imagine there will be digital content that simply doesn't get saved. I think it is safe to say that there will be enough storage capacity to save what we want to save," Reinsel noted.

He referred to some of the ongoing strategies occurring to make enterprise storage much more efficient -- including data classification, virtualization, server consolidation, virtual libraries and de-duplication of data.

Among its findings, the IDC EMC study determined that by 2010 nearly 70 per cent of the digital universe will be created by individuals.

At the same time organizations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability, and compliance of at least 85 per cent of digital content. In addition, most user-generated content will be handled inside an organization by some function within the IT infrastructure.

The IDC EMC study pointed to the importance of classifying data in the enterprise.

One key recommendation is a "comprehensive and disciplined approach to managing information" and appreciating "the hidden and not so hidden costs" that comes from the information explosion.

"It is unprecedented, in our lifetime and something that is relatively new, relative to what we have seen with traditional creation of data in IT, stated Michael Kerr, director of Canada channels at EMC Canada.

IDC estimated that today less than 10 per cent of organizational information is "classified," or ranked according to value. However, the research organization optimistically predicted that the classification of data will grow more than 50 per cent a year.

More than 95 per cent of the digital universe is unstructured data (i.e. email, attachments, multimedia, etc); and in organizations, unstructured data takes up more than 80 per cent of all information.

Furthermore 20 per cent of the digital universe, stated IDC and EMC, is subject to compliance rules and standards, and about 30 per cent is potentially subject to security applications.