by Angela Guess
A new article reports, “Poor data management, especially unstructured data, costs organizations a lot of money. The Ponemon Institute recently conducted a study sponsored by Novell to try to determine exactly how much. The Ponemon report found that storage, control and compliance associated with unstructured data have become major challenges for many organizations. On average, organizations waste $2.1 million annually because of poor data management practices. The report finds that organizations make it too hard for their users to organize and file their information. The wasted costs are most frequently associated with e-discovery and internal audit activity.”
The article goes on, “Small organizations are hit hardest with the costs. While large organizations may be losing money on poor data management, $2.71 million on average, compared to an average of $1.23 million for small companies, the cost per employee works out to being six times higher at small organizations. Many of these costs that are hitting organizations are the result of penalties from lack of compliance with regulations. Because of that, it’s no wonder that the organizations with the highest costs are in heavily regulated sectors like financial services, pharmaceuticals, communications and healthcare.”
Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder of the Ponemon Institute stated “Early evidence suggests that companies deploying enabling technologies that reduce the complexity of file or volume management can decrease the overall compliance cost associated with the storage of unstructured information.”
photo credit: purpleslog
