The biggest data challenge over the next year, as perceived by Irish IT executives, is not one of security or remote synchronisation issues thrown up by an increasingly mobile workforce. No, it is that of email and management of the dreaded inbox.
A survey by Kroll Ontrack quizzed 86 prominent Irish organisations to find that a quarter of their IT managers are worried about growing archives, as the inbox remains a staple repository for all sorts of sensitive information including financial records, documents, contacts and calendars.
Not only does this lead to a strain on email storage, resulting in heaving archives, but firms are also unsure as to what they need to hold on to in order to meet compliance requirements
Kroll Ontrack said this is further illustrated by the fact that it has seen an increase by almost 20pc in requests to restore Microsoft Exchange data here in Ireland over the past six months.
And this ‘back-up everything’ policy will only lead to more storage problems in the future, with the number of corporate emails projected to rise from the current level of 156 daily email messages per user to 233 by 2012.
According to Kroll Ontrack, restoring and processing large volumes of Exchange data can be extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive for the IT department. It has advised that firms should be ensuring two things – firstly, that all unwanted data is securely erased, and secondly, that remaining information is stored efficiently and ready for quick retrieval.
“Many Irish organisations don’t realise that saving everything is both inefficient and ineffective,” said Ciarán Farrell, business development manager at Kroll Ontrack Ireland.
“By taking some pre-emptive steps and using the latest Exchange management tools, they can reduce storage costs and improve their organisation’s competitiveness by recognising and increasing the usefulness of their archives.
“With an efficient mailbox archive management strategy, organisations are also better prepared should disaster strike, or if they are called upon to present information to comply with specific legislation.”
By Marie Boran
