Most organisations are sitting on a goldmine of data, yet few excel at unstructured data management. Research shows that 80-90% of enterprise data is unstructured. Think videos, documents, images, emails, and application-specific files. Anything that doesn’t fit into traditional database schemas.
This isn’t a storage problem, there’s plenty of vendors who will sell you any number of storage technologies. This is a business challenge that costs companies millions in operational inefficiency, compliance risk, and missed opportunities, all linked to the management of unstructured data.
Companies that figure out how to properly manage their unstructured data don’t just make life easier for their IT teams. They are building a competitive advantage, using their data as their leverage in the market.
The Hidden Cost of Data Chaos
The problem isn’t the data itself. It’s the fact that most behave like digital hoarders. Files get dumped into network drives, cloud storage platforms, and departmental silos organically. Every user, team and department behaves differently. Throw in the applications and tools that are in play, and it’s almost impossible to systemise or govern this data without proper unstructured data management.
And honestly, that’s not the job to be done here.
Organisations need to be messy (to a certain degree), because that’s the way humans work.
However data sprawl at scale does create a fair list of business challenges.
- Wasted time spent hunting for the right file or the latest version.
- Project delays while people try to understand what data they need, and have access to
- Compliance teams needing to locate specific information to comply
As organisations scale, there is an operational drag of the fact that users need to find the right data. It could be on NAS shares, Sharepoint, any number of other cloud storage tools. Multiplied across thousands of users, the statistic that users spend up to 30% of their time searching for the right information doesn’t sound so implausible in the context of managing unstructured data effectively.
Why Traditional Storage Solutions Fall Short
Buying more storage doesn’t solve the problem.
Storage is just the warehouse for your organisation’s stuff. The value is in the boxes that are on the warehouse shelves. The goal here is to know what’s in each box, whether it’s valuable to your business, and use that to drive revenue.
Don’t just build a bigger warehouse.
Combine this with the fact / conspiracy that storage vendors aren’t always the right people to involve in building a picture of today’s storage consumption, and forecast what tomorrow’s will be (they’ll be prioritising their commercial strategy / agenda), and we need to think outside the box (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Enterprise unstructured data management isn’t about storing more stuff; it’s about understanding, organising, and leveraging your existing data.
Would you rather have a huge, messy warehouse where finding the right thing takes hours. Or a small, perfectly organised facility where everything has its place?
The Business Case for Getting Organised
The first step is to realise that unstructured data management can deliver measurable business value:
Operational Efficiency improves when users and teams can find and access the data they need quickly. Onboarding new employees and starting projects go from hours to minutes thanks to the management of unstructured data.
Risk Management and Compliance improves when you know what data you have, where it lives, and who has access to it. Answering anything from auditor’s questions to GDPR requests becomes a far less daunting task.
Cost Optimisation happens naturally when you can identify Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial data (ROT) and move it to a suitable storage class. Or even delete it entirely.
Collaboration Improves by having structured access to unstructured data, where teams can work together safe in the knowledge that should they misplace their data, it can easily be found and put back into its rightful place.
Beyond Storage: The Management Layer
When organisations get unstructured data management right – implementing it above their storage infrastructure – this is where everything comes together.
Unstructured data management systems provide visibility, governance and the ability to automate movement of data, turning what could be chaos into their competitive advantage.
After the first scan of your organisation’s data into the unstructured data management system, dashboards will show data usage patterns, access trends, and opportunities for storage optimisation. From there everything we have spoken about above; operational improvements, cost optimisation, risk management and the holy grail of business-rule driven data automation become much easier to achieve.
The Time is Now
Unstructured data management for the Enterprise isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a business critical tool.
Organisations who manage and leverage their unstructured data will outperform those who don’t. The question isn’t “do you need a data management system”, but “how quickly can I implement data management”.
If you’re debating the ROI of putting in an unstructured data management system, your competitors are already leveraging their unstructured data into a bigger slice of market share.
The choice is simple: keep building bigger warehouses for your mess, or turn that mess into your competitive advantage.