Awash in Data

My father worked in corporate America before everyone had a personal computer. Instead, my Dad had a tray on the left side of his desk that acted as his in box and a tray on the right that acted as his out box.

He traveled to Asia on multi week business trips and upon his return, he’d be greeted by a giant stack of memo’s, directives and other inter-office correspondence. His solution was to take the stack of paper from his in box and move it directly to the trash can. “If it’s important, they can call me,” he would say.

Dad’s approach to managing his data (paper) wasn’t glitzy or fancy, but it worked and I think it has some application in the digital world.

I’m pretty sure that if I deleted everything in my email store that was more than 6 months old, I’d probably never miss 99% of it. But I know to my core that 1% of that email data set is vital, and so the whole thing lingers on the mail server. That data is then replicated to Endsight’s off-site back up cloud and so now, this blob of mostly useless data exists in two places.

In his article entitled, “The big data addiction” Matt Prigg shares some of his insight into how this very issue is impacting organizations of all sizes today. In it Prigg says, “In a cruel twist of fate, our dependence on ever-expanding digital data has created a feedback loop that fuels its own growth. Within the past 10 years or so, we’ve grown more productive by using business technology. As a result, we’ve created even more massive mountains of data, and we rely upon those mountains to such a degree that we need to duplicate them – multiplying the problem again.”

In addition to email, Prigg is writing about business system data, file shares and a litany of other administrative and back up data sets. In a large organization, this data grows and duplicates at a much faster rate than in a small organization, but a small business isn’t immune to the problem.

I think that for most small businesses that data can be broken up into two parts, email and shared files. I recently contributed an article to the East Bay Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators that highlights a few technologies that I think can be used to help manage email data without pressing the “delete” key. http://www.ebala.org/Topic.aspx?wiki_id=87#VendorArticle

For file shares, I think one of the prime culprits for expanding data is the fact that no one is really responsible for the files stored on the file share. For example, Endsight had a file on its sales and marketing drive called “2003 archive.” It hadn’t been opened since 2004. Every time I saw the file I thought to myself, “I should just right click & select delete.” But I didn’t create any of the files and so I couldn’t say for sure that someone wouldn’t go looking for a file housed in the archive.

I think the best solution for this problem is to create and publish a document retention policy. For an example of one click here: http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/sampledocretentionpolicy.pdf . This can help to eliminate any guess work and replace it with simple policy enforcement. You can even use technology to set rules and automate the document retention / purge process.

More and more of Endsight’s outsourced IT clients are encountering data store limit issues. We expect these issues to increase as firms move their on-premise computing systems to cloud computing.

To help our clients address this challenge, Endsight provides Planning Services: CIO/Sr. IT Management level consulting & strategy as part of our fixed fee, outsources IT approach.  If you’d like to talk in-person about your data situation click here to schedule an appointment.

Cloud Computing

There is a lot of noise about cloud computing. It’s fairly new and new is exciting. So what exactly is cloud computing? More importantly, why should a small business owner care?

The cloud is a metaphor used to describe the Internet. Cloud computing is building on that metaphor to describe using the Internet to deliver computing resources as a service. Broadly, cloud computing is the convergence of three technologies: server virtualization, utility computing and software as a service.

1. Virtualization allows software to be separated from physical hardware.This in-turn, allows a single physical server to become 10, 50 or even 100 virtual servers.
2. Utility / grid computing allows server capacity to be accessed across a grid of systems.This in-turn allows computing capacity to increase or decrease depending on user or resource demands.
3. Software as a service allows on-demand software applications via the Internet to be purchased on a predictable monthly subscription basis.

This convergence allows a provider to aggregate many computing resources and profitably deliver those resources as a service for a fixed monthly fee.

The resulting delivery model is highly efficient, but it’s not the key reason for a small business to consider cloud computing. The key reason is best illustrated by looking back a century ago to the emergence of the national electricity grid.

Originally, if a business needed electricity it would have to build and fund the generating capacity on its own. Boilers, turbines and transformers were expensive and so only the largest firms could afford the new technology. The emergence of the grid allowed everyone access to electricity on a subscription basis. All one had to do was plug in. No more expensive capital projects.

In the modern era, mostly because of its size, a small business is inherently forced to either pay for more computer resources than it needs or to suffer with systems that won’t quite do the job. It’s an unwinnable contest that does not balance out.

Cloud computing gives a small business the ability to finally balance that equation by allowing them to pay for only the specific IT resources, service and support they need. Small businesses no longer have to lay out huge amounts of capital for servers, software and staff to build and maintain IT resources such as corporate email, shared files and accounting applications. Instead, they can plug into a computing cloud and access only the resources they need on a fixed fee subscription basis.

As with any new technology, there are a lot of options and providers to consider working with. If cloud computing is an option for your business, moving an on-premise computer network to the cloud needs to be thoroughly planned. For more information about cloud computing click here.

In addition to operating a private computing cloud, Endsight manages more than 100 on-premise computer networks. If you’d like to discuss your current situation and determine the cloud’s applicability to you’re business click here to schedule an in-person meeting.

The Value of Data: What is your data worth to your Organization

In my opinion, the key incite to glean from Pete’s article is that your data is probably worth WAY more than you think. In fact, it is likely the very life blood driving your organization.

Many of Endsight’s clients operate a service business. They count on the intellectual property locked in their email and business applications to meet their customers’ needs. For them, data is the business.

As Pete’s article notes, “The Department of Commerce has determined that 90% of companies which do not have access to data for more than 5 days go out of business within 1 year.”

By itself, that statistic is alarming, but in the Bay Area it’s further exasperated by this one:

On April 15 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that The US Geological Survey believes “A strong and deadly earthquake is virtually certain to strike on one of California’s major seismic faults within the next 30 years”

I’ve reposted Pete’s article below and invite you to consider what kind of impact a “day without computers” might have on your business. If you find the impact as alarming as Pete, contact us and let’s talk about how we can help mitigate that risk.

I’ve embedded a slide deck to a free seminar Endsight has provided about disaster preparedness. If you belong to a professional association or business / community group that might have an interest in the topic, let me know and I’d be happy to present it. If you’d like more information about the presentation, Email me and I’ll send you a topic abstract.