The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/116777
David Rohde is the Senior Director of Consulting Services for Epiq Systems. He brings more than 15 years of experience as a courtroom litigator and in legal technology project management to his role at Epiq. David has implemented new technologies in support of complex litigation and discovery preparedness, designed and implemented case and matter management systems and document management systems, and advised on email archiving initiatives. He can be contacted at drohde@epiqsystems.com. Most companies today produce several terabytes of electronic information each year. Email alone is sent, saved, duplicated and stored, and each employee can send hundreds of email messages each day. In the 2010 Computerworld article "Data Growth Remains IT's Biggest Challenge, Gartner Says," it was reported that the overall volume of data in enterprises was estimated to continue to grow at more than 40 percent year over year. By 2015, total data in the world is expected to increase to 7.9 zettabytes — the equivalent of 18 million Libraries of Congress, according to "The Growth of Unstructured Data: What To Do with All Those Zettabytes?" Changing use patterns because of Internet-enabled mobile devices, cloud storage and social media only add to information overload. For a long time, we were told "storage is cheap," but it has turned out to hold hidden costs, and even as the cost per gigabyte has dropped to a fifth of what it was in 2005, IT and information storage expenditures are increasing. Add to the direct cost of storage the records management obligations that accompany its ownership, and you find that although storing information is cheap, managing it is not. And while early iterations of email archiving solutions relieved the burden of ever-growing email repositories placed on the mail servers, they were not initially designed to manage and take action on information in a way that's compliant with records management and discovery obligations. START WITH POLICY In order to tame the explosion of information, data management measures must be applied and generally include a framework grounded in policy that is: • Supported by leadership, • Enabled by technology, and • In sync with the business, legal and regulatory needs of the organization. Peer to Peer 51