IBM White Paper Sample

More data – the right data - can translate to better decision making, improved processes, enhanced communication, and the rich context that enables improved analytics to drive better corporate performance – key ingredients for competitive advantage. Investing in improved exploitation of data is at the top of many companies’ priority list, but rarely is that goal accompanied by a strategy and plan to identify, gather, protect and assure the availability of the right data. File-based data from applications like medical imaging, collaboration stores and routine archives is exploding and often ungoverned: IDC recently pointed out that over 50% of data creation is in file-based formats, and that in 2008, for the first time, file-based storage capacity shipped exceeded block-based capacity. Yet file-based storage is rarely included in data stewardship thinking, which remains dominated by “conventional” existing applications. In this discussion, we use “data growth” to refer not only to structured, database-resident information, but that huge volume of file-based information as well.

Executives must recognize that data growth impacts corporate performance – of people and business processes as well as technology – and require IT to deliver a clear vision that addresses this challenge.