The exponential growth of data being generated and flowing into companies’ networks will necessitate that data management be closely linked to business strategies by identifying the most important data and efficiently managing the rest.

This direct link between data management and corporate strategy can only be achieved by a detailed assessment of data-flow patterns through companies’ networks and is foundational to developing an effective information and communication technology (ICT) strategy, says data management software company CommVault South Africa enterprise account manager Bryan Balfe.

“Assessing the whole picture of a company’s data and workflows is core to CommVault’s development of an effective strategy to enable a company to effectively and efficiently manage data.

“Needlessly retaining data is costly and counterproductive, and companies should investigate using third-party services, such as cloud providers and co-hosting services, which might reduce costs to their businesses.”

Data managers, who are increasingly important for all companies’ bottom lines and help companies meet industry-specific ICT compliance regulations, should follow the data as it flows into a company, as well as determine the return on investment for each business unit where data are generated and stored.

The empirical information garnered through this process allows cogent decisions to be taken on infrastructure and storage.

Companies can then make smarter decisions on the efficiency of ICT spending and infrastructure requirements, such as considering the costs of duplicate on-premise infrastructure required to provide redundancy, compared with the costs of using external resources and service providers, especially for less important data.

If companies determine that 80% of data are never accessed again, or that most data are only used within three months of creation, then this enables companies to make decisions on what data are critical, what and how long data must be kept, what to delete and what should be placed into long-term lower-cost storage, says Balfe.

“These business decisions regarding the costs and benefits of data management must then be considered against compliance rules for specific data, such as medical records or financial records. However, even once these rules have been factored in, most companies do not effectively or efficiently manage their data, and the exponential growth of data in future will compound the costs and problems.”

Companies should, therefore, investigate flexible and scalable ICT use models, which include cloud and hosting services, to ensure that they do not make unsustainable infrastructure and investment decisions if conditions change. They should also match the importance of the data to the cost of storage or management.

CommVault’s best practices involve assessing the generation, movements and flows of data and then matching them with the strategy of a business. This enables the architecture of various ICT solutions, which are required to provide a business with the systems it requires to carry out its functions without burdening it with the management, maintenance and funding of systems that are not part of its core business functions, to be determined.

“The predictions of the growth of data volumes within the next five to ten years mean that most companies will not be able to analyse all the data moving through their networks – using business processes to identify the most important data is, therefore, crucial in managing critical data effectively and noncritical data efficiently.

“Given the scale of the impact of data growth on business decisions, developing a flexible, scalable model to manage workflows and data is necessary. Specifically, decisions regarding critical data management and noncritical data management will inform the data management strategy of a business,” concludes Balfe.