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Database managers could face compliance risk

September 4, 2008

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According to Forrester Research, businesses and organizations, large and small could face serious compliance risks because of their failure to improve database archiving processes and make critical data readily accessible.

A staggering 21 percent of expenditure on data center infrastructure is directed mostly at supporting data growth, as businesses attempt to retain corporate information for analysis. On average, about 64 percent of businesses surveyed by Forrester store their data on high-cost tier-1 storage. But this is only part of the problem. It gets worse.

A 'Laissez Faire' attitude is being blamed for about 27.2 percent of businesses ending up running production databases of over 60 terabytes in size, and for their difficulty in retrieving critical historical information-- data that could seriously jeopardize a company's bottom line, if not its very own survival warns Forrester.

The overall growth in database storage size is occurring alongside a two-fold increase in online transactional data, Forrester added. "Overall, database archiving often fails to get the attention it deserves compared to other important activities related to production databases and data warehouses," said Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst at Forrester.

"Database administrators and IT managers need to place the same priority on the long term retention and retrieval of structured data that they place today on managing e-mail and similar document archives," warns Yuhanna.

"A database archival system becomes really critical when you need to access archived information in response to a legal summons, a critical customer service issue, a data center security investigation or a tough technical issue. The true value of archiving grows considerably as it becomes easier to access the archived information," said Forrester.

However, database archiving isn't the only data compliance risk companies are struggling everyday. According to research released separately, about 35 percent of IT users have lost critical data in corporate documents and been totally unable to find them when required.

Traditional approaches to database archiving processes often focus on moving inactive data out of production DBs instead of simply optimizing data storage and making information easily accessible to the people that depend on it.

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Source: Clearpace.