Simon leads CommVault's Information Access & Management business including Information Risk, eDiscovery, Compliance and Information Search.

Over the last 20 years he has worked for many large multi-national while building deep expertise in a range of topics including business intelligence, data warehousing, application and information management.

Most recently, Simon has gained specific experience in data retention and archiving, working for or with some of the leading companies in this field to gain specialist knowledge in information risk and compliance.

Tackling the Big Data Retention Challenge

Monday, October 17, 2011

As I head down to DC this week for the Association of Records Managers (ARMA) annual conference, my mind is on "Big Data." I'm thinking about various content types and the never-ending retention requirements of repositories like SharePoint that are bursting at the seams due to the inflow of data, as well as the constant demands from users for meaningful access to information.

The job of today's records managers isn't easy. The first issue that comes to mind is intelligence. By that, I mean approaches, solutions and products that can keep up with the additional challenges of retention and access in anticipation of the Big Data growth expected in the next few years. It's impractical to think that existing approaches to classification and storage can cope when they rely heavily on end-user interaction. Innovation around the automation of object-level tagging and retention are a must and I don't just mean the semantic analysis of content.

The second is integration. We have too many solutions in organizations today that operate in silos, processing information repetitively to store copies. Consider one email message and you need to track a copy in the mail system, local archive, ECM, laptop and possibly mobile device. In the face of the Big Data tsunami, we can't continue to process and manage records again and again, let alone store them longer than is necessary. To tackle this challenge will require IT to deploy an integrated solution that provides virtual record stores, global deduplication across multiple repositories, and the single pass processing of information regardless of location.

Sounds like science fiction? But it isn't. This capability is real and available today! Come and visit CommVault at booth #832 to learn more about how our Simpana software solution addresses Big Data retention. I'll also be speaking on this topic in a session on Tuesday, October 18 at 12:15 p.m. where I'll highlight the role of modern and adaptable strategies to record keeping for managing retention lifecycle without introducing IT complexities and additional costs. In the meantime, let me know if I've missed anything on this topic.

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