Middle East organizations need better data management practices

DUBAI, UAE: A relentless explosion of Big Data continues to ignite pervasive and persistent problems as organizations in the Middle East grapple with how best to retain, access, discover and ultimately delete content in compliance with evolving regulations.

Growth is being impacted by evolving data retention requirements, and industry regulations, which necessitate that some types of data be kept for anywhere from a few years to indefinitely.

Big Data plagues many stakeholders, from IT to Legal. While IT departments grapple with how to support complex Big Data environments, legal teams are tasked with making accommodations for Big Data in the already expensive eDiscovery process.

The world generated more than one zettabyte (ZB), or one million petabytes (PBs), of data in 2010<1>. This year, the growth is predicted to reach 72 ZBs a year, fueled in part by the rapid rise of machine-generated data.

Structured data (e.g., data records from programmed trading and financial transaction systems, intelligent meters, call-detail records for smartphones and tablets, etc.), unstructured data (e.g., images, audio or video files) as well as semi-structured data (e.g., emails, logs, etc.) add yet another layer of management complexity, especially when determining the most efficient and reliable way to ingest, protect, organize, access, preserve and defensibly delete all this vital information.

Henrik Pedersen, regional presales manager, MENA, Eastern & South Eastern Europe, CommVault Systems says that in sifting through voluminous Big Data to find responsive information, organizations can spend millions of dollars to isolate relevant Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and even more to review it. Simply put, the Big Data problem brings new meaning to the phrase, "looking for a needle in a haystack."

Regional companies in the Middle East can begin to view data backups and archives more strategically while leveraging integrated solutions for lowering storage costs and compliance risks. Technology solutions need to meet the demands of the business with a flexible and adaptable strategy that best reflects the needs of the business as it evolves.