Electronic Discovery Navigator

Clouds: Long-Term Fix for Data Storage Obsolescence

Clouds: Long-Term Fix for Data Storage Obsolescence

"Given the volume of online data generated every day, IT organizations large and small must confront the well known issue of storage obsolescence.

The good news is that, like all computer-based technology, disk and tape storage is rapidly improving and changing, offering increased density, performance, and reliability. The bad news is that as storage technology changes, the data must be migrated or copied from the current storage to the new storage.

Data migration is a constant personal albatross for many IT administrators, and with good reason. It’s time-consuming, boring, and fraught with potential errors. In other words, it may be necessary, but it is never fun, and it is often treacherous.

This problem is becoming critical as corporate and regulatory compliance, along with e-discovery, force IT organizations to keep data under management longer and longer. In other words, the problem is growing more urgent. Take the example of using tape as an archive medium. As new tape drives and technologies are released approximately every three years, the older tape drives and media are instantly made obsolete."

E-discovery requests have growing impact on data storage

E-discovery requests have growing impact on data storage

"E-discovery's impact on storage is primarily felt in the data backup environment, according to Brian Babineau, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass. Corporate counsel often issues a blanket order for IT to save everything -- email, files or databases -- for a specific time period, and most companies have traditionally used tape to preserve the data.

The problems begin when organizations save too much data for longer than they need to keep it, and that data is inaccessible or very expensive to find on tape. At that point, moving to disk-based backup is critical, Babineau said.

"Electronic discovery has provided another catalyst to go to disk-based backup," Babineau observed.

E-discovery has also forced storage teams to build systems of record and, more specifically, archived systems. Implementing an archive is important to ensure that important ESI will be accessible online, easier to search and easier to delete."

It’s Happening Now: This is the Tera Era of Data Storage

It’s Happening Now: This is the Tera Era of Data Storage

"It’s not terribly revelatory to say that there has been an explosion in the amount of digital data recently. After all, in the decades since the term “Information Age” was first coined back in 1971, uninterrupted, unrelenting data growth has been perennial.

In the 1980s, the new Mac OS and Windows layout-rich documents and spreadsheets replaced simple ASCII-based files, invoking the transition from the temporary storage of the day, the 360 kilobyte (KB) 5¼-inch floppy, to much higher capacity 1.44 megabyte (MB) 3½-inch floppies. In that same decade, IBM introduced the 3380, the world’s first gigabyte (GB) capacity hard drive, and it was time for our language to march forward as well. Soon, gigabyte supplanted megabyte as the common term for storage capacity.

And the march continues. New visual and audio file types and increased computing power continue to drive storage capacities upward. But today’s digital data explosion is, indeed, very different.

This is a new era of increasing storage capacity. The Information Age has given way to the Internet Age. Digital data now permeates much more of our lives and lifestyles. It spans our laptops and desktops, of course, but also a new host of broadly used consumer devices like digital cameras, mobile phones, digital video camcorders, car navigation systems, gaming devices, digital video record­ers (DVRs) and handheld audio players, each wholesaling in comparatively huge file types. And while some of these devices have internal solid state storage, many more also have hard drives. Moreover, virtually all of these devices ultimately interact with a larger hard drive storage system for the ability to access, network and share files, songs and games, video footage, digital movies or photos."

The Cost of E-Discovery

The Cost of E-Discovery

"There are few words that frighten corporate executives or storage managers more than "lawsuit" and "e-discovery," since one usually leads to the other. Both can be costly, even if e-discovery works the way it is suppose to work and your company ends up winning the lawsuit.

Businesses and other organizations spent more than $2.7 billion on electronic data discovery last year, and spending on EDD will grow to more than $4.6 billion by 2010, according to consultants George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, who presented their Sixth Annual Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey in a report published earlier this year on Law.com.

The good news? "Better and earlier analysis of electronically stored information means a greater ability to successfully navigate the EDD whitewater," said the consultants, who see a shift in the market from a services-based approach to one where improved software used by companies in-house and by law firms and service providers plays a greater role.

Storage, software, and search vendors know a good market when they see it, and more vendor pitches tout the ability of their products and services to help with e-discovery. That's a change from a few years ago when they were offering products to help companies comply with SEC regulations and Sarbanes-Oxley rules, according to Arun Taneja, head of analyst firm Taneja Group ."

Archiving 'driving storage software growth'

Archiving 'driving storage software growth'

"The market for storage software achieved its seventh consecutive year of growth in 2007, according to a report, driven by archiving applications.

According to figures from IDC, the fourth quarter of last year saw revenues grow 11.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2006, to reach $2.9 billion, while full year revenues were up 10.4 per cent to almost $11 billion.

This was underpinned in part by the performance of the archiving market, the report said. This grew 18.6 per cent thanks to electronic discovery and compliance requirements."

Hitachi Enables Organizations to Gain Control of Rogue Data with All New Storage Services

Hitachi Enables Organizations to Gain Control of Rogue Data with All New Storage Services

"As organizations struggle with the search and retrieval of unmanaged data stored in siloed infrastructures, Hitachi Data Systems today introduced all new file and content services that dramatically simplify data management. The newly unveiled Hitachi Data Discovery Suite delivers powerful content index and search services across network attached storage (NAS) and content archive environments — an industry first that breaks through the traditional barriers of stovepipe storage infrastructures and mitigates the risk of unmanaged or rogue data. With today’s announcement, Hitachi delivers common search, retention, movement and protection of data — extending its proven capabilities in block storage data management to file services with in an integrated services oriented platform.

Today’s organizations are faced with severe business challenges as a result of the rapid growth of unstructured data stored across multiple storage infrastructures and data centers. According to an April 2006 IDC report1, the cost of ineffective search is estimated at $5,251 per worker per year. For 1,000 workers, the cost is estimated at $5.25 million. The risks associated with failed or prolonged searches for legal discovery or compliance can be even higher."

BlueArc Titan 3000 Storage Series Opens Door to Dynamic IT Infrastructure

BlueArc Titan 3000 Storage Series Opens Door to Dynamic IT Infrastructure

"BlueArc® Corporation, a leader in scalable, high-performance unified network storage, today announced the BlueArc Titan 3000 series of unified storage solutions, doubling the world-record-holding performance and capacity of current BlueArc products -- at the industry's lowest price per IOP, all without increasing energy demands and environmental impact. Horizontal enterprises and vertical organizations in data-driven markets, can now take advantage of improved technology that has been battle-tested in the world's most demanding IT environments, which include Internet services, life sciences, entertainment, oil and gas exploration, design and simulation and electronic discovery. Additionally, BlueArc has expanded its leadership in harnessing the massive growth of unstructured data, through the introduction of an open application programming interface (API), which brings the Titan 3000's leading capabilities to the Company's diverse set of application partners.

Customers in all markets are grappling with processes that have grown incredibly data-intensive and complex due to increasing file sizes, a broadening user base, multiple remote offices with 24 by 7 data access demands and expanding volumes. From Web 2.0 applications for collaboration to oil and gas exploration, credit card processing and visual effects rendering, a wide range of enterprise activities demand storage flexibility and performance once reserved solely for hosted environments. As facility and energy costs rise, a flexible and dynamic infrastructure also promises to help organizations optimize their capital investments."

White House e-discovery squeeze puts e-mail backup in focus

White House e-discovery squeeze puts e-mail backup in focus

" As the White House contends with a federal judge's order to prepare a discovery plan amid a legal skirmish about missing e-mail, storage experts say businesses should move to improve backup and e-mail archiving policies to avoid similar legal problems.

District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly this week issued an order enabling the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics watchdog group to perform limited questioning of White House officials. The group last May had filed suit against the White House Office of Administration seeking access to White House e-mail under the federal Freedom of Information Act."

Here's the court order.

Storage Prepares for Court

Storage Prepares for Court

"As CIOs and IT managers struggle with the storage impact of the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) and an ever more litigious corporate landscape, vendors are eyeing new opportunities.

First up is Mimosa, which is adding content monitoring to its Nearpoint email archiving software. "It's a software module that sits on top of Nearpoint," explains T.M. Ravi, the Mimosa CEO, adding that the module generates email alerts based on predefined keywords and phrases."

New Addition to Blog Roll

eDiscoveryInfo is another blog that I read.  It's on my Blog Roll.

Check out their reference to a post about returning to paper production?