Three tips for dealing with unstructured data - lots of it

As the need to support and store unstructured data grows, experts and users offer these tips for making sure your storage environment is efficient and reliable.

Implement good data-management policies. "Data management is one of those things that falls through the cracks because it falls into several areas: It's got a leg in IT, it's got another leg in the business and somewhere in between, it's got a governance/compliance component," says Andrew Madejczyk, vice president of global technology operations at pre-employment screening company Sterling Infosystems in New York. "But you have to get a handle on it or you'll never control your storage spend."

Never do forklift upgrades. "Do not rip and replace what you have," says Jon Toigo, CEO of analyst firm Toigo Partners International. "Build your architectural vision and implement to that over the next three to five years. And as hardware comes up for refresh, you ditch the stuff that is stovepiped and replace it with open storage products."

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As the need to support and store unstructured data grows, experts and users offer these tips for making sure your storage environment is efficient and reliable.

Implement good data-management policies. "Data management is one of those things that falls through the cracks because it falls into several areas: It's got a leg in IT, it's got another leg in the business and somewhere in between, it's got a governance/compliance component," says Andrew Madejczyk, vice president of global technology operations at pre-employment screening company Sterling Infosystems in New York. "But you have to get a handle on it or you'll never control your storage spend."

Never do forklift upgrades. "Do not rip and replace what you have," says Jon Toigo, CEO of analyst firm Toigo Partners International. "Build your architectural vision and implement to that over the next three to five years. And as hardware comes up for refresh, you ditch the stuff that is stovepiped and replace it with open storage products."

Stop buying Tier 1 storage. "Don't be content to keep feeding this machine," says Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group. "There's been an explosion of storage technologies - data de-duplication, thin provisioning, storage resource management, archiving. Look to those first to optimize what you have, and then earmark your investments in securing and managing your unstructured content."

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