The Business Case for "In-Place Governance" of Information

For years, regulated organizations have desired improvements in unstructured information management systems. But when legal risk and compliance became an unavoidable business concern, combined with the exponential accumulation of unstructured information, regulated organizations were compelled to rethink their approach and take action.

Initial attempts at managing unstructured information grew out of a "centralized" computing paradigm. This required the transfer of unstructured information to a centralized, managed repository. Unfortunately, this "centralized" model has failed to deliver the promised benefits. User adoption has been anemic and only a small fraction of unstructured information finds its way into a central repository, leaving the vast majority of information unmanaged.

To better manage unstructured information-which resides in email, user hard drives, shared drives and SharePoint-the "manage-in-place" model was developed. This model minimizes changes to user behavior, mitigates legal risk, cuts e-discovery costs and eliminates costs related to migration while reducing storage needs.

NextPage builds on this manage-in-place model by leveraging patented algorithms for creating and maintaining what is called a "Digital Thread." The Digital Thread tracks unstructured information in any location (acting like a "GPS for documents"), enabling organizations to apply information governance policies to any file. This pervasive ability to govern files ensures compliant enforcement of policy and reduction of e-discovery and storage costs without interfering with user behavior or requiring information to be centralized.

Choose Wisely

For regulated businesses, approaches to the important task of information governance usually fall somewhere along a continuum of four categories. We have evaluated the attributes of the following models in an attempt to determine which approach or combination of approaches makes the most sense.

The Right Combination: Proactive In-place Governance

By proactively governing unstructured information "in-place," organizations achieve the following business benefits:

• Cost of storage. With analysts projecting an overall storage growth of 44X in the next 10 years, organizations must face the challenge of managing this cost. Clearly, keeping everything forever is not an option. Information governance that manages in-place enables you to substantially reduce the total volume of unstructured information being stored for lower storage costs-all without impeding your business.
• Cost of e-discovery. The operational costs associated with e-discovery directly correlate with the volume of unstructured information. Typical experience, conservatively measured, indicates an average cost of $1,000 per GB. In-place information governance reduces those costs by applying a business-justified disposition policy of outdated information. That means less money spent on storage and e-discovery.
• Legal risk and compliance. For most regulated organizations, legal risk and compliance are the main motivators driving the need to manage information in-place. That's because a solid and consistent governance model is required to enforce disposition and retention policies regardless of where information is stored. The strong compliance offered by in-place information governance helps mitigate the risks of sanctions, investigations and motions.
• IT infrastructure. The alternative to in-place information governance involves costly central repositories and the massive overhead associated with additional servers, storage and storage management software.
• Change management. By managing information in-place, organizations gain the advantage of better user adoption. Users don't have to change their normal work patterns of creating, editing, saving and emailing. That translates into greater user acceptance and better compliance.

By proactively managing information in-place, organizations realize significant compliance benefits and dramatically reduce legal risks. Companies reduce costs by utilizing existing infrastructure instead of relying on expensive central repositories. Retention and disposition policies are effectively enforced with minimal impact to user experience—the system does all the work. Information is classified the moment it is created and from there a "digital thread" is created that follows information wherever it goes.

Centralized Model

Attributes
Information is stored in a centralized repository.

Evaluation
Companies can enforce strict records management. However, well over 90% of unstructured information continues to reside in various unmanaged storage locations—such as email, shared drives, user hard drives, and Microsoft SharePoint—leaving many dangerous gaps in these information governance systems.

De-Centralized Model

Attributes
Information governance manages information "in-place" wherever it may be, whether it's a hard drive, a shared drive, SharePoint, or USB devices.

Evaluation
In today's highly distributed, heterogeneous environments, this approach avoids the prohibitive infrastructure costs of the centralized model, while providing the flexibility needed to manage widely dispersed information.

Reactive Governance

Attributes
Emphasis is placed on enabling organizations to react in a timely and legally defensible manner to litigation requirements and resulting legal holds.

Evaluation
Strictly limited to the functions of e-discovery, reactive governance by definition cannot anticipate or prevent problems, only react once they've been discovered.

Proactive Governance

Attributes
Emphasis on managing the entire lifecycle of information and enforcing the retention/disposition policies on that information.

Evaluation
Organizations can track and classify in real time, providing the monitoring and reporting necessary to stay ahead of potential problems.

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NextPage is a leading provider of information governance solutions, enabling organizations to track and control unstructured information to meet their document retention and disposition requirements. NextPage was named among the 2011 Cool Vendors in Content Management by leading IT analyst firm Gartner.