Whatever storage you provision, it’s never enough.
This is what I hear from IT managers or enterprise owners. Yes, this is the pain. Most organizations keep investing in larger and larger storage, but it’s never enough. If you have also faced it in your organization, please read further.
You may be the victim of “Digital Obesity”.
Digital Obesity happens when your users are suffering from “hoarding syndrome”. By the sense of insecurity or some past experience of data loss, they might develop tendency to store multiple copies of their data.
This results in multiple copies of your digital assets eating (read hogging) your storage.
What you perceive to be enough, in no time turns out to be “not enough”.
How to get rid of this digital obesity? Well, IT industry has few good solutions for enterprises to overcome digital obesity. They call it as de-duplication tools. Following are the steps one should follow to be lean and agile on data loads.
Find out some good system which can centralize all your data at one location. Yes, all your drawings, designs, documents, spreadsheets, pdf, pictures, and whatever you think is your data. You may use Linux or Windows based File Servers, BLACKBox for centralizing your data.
Use some good tools like FSlint, FDupe or BLACKBoxto generate duplicate files report based on file signatures, structure, size and time stamps. These tools will facilitate deletion of duplicate tagged file with single click. This will make you lean and slim.
By all the hardwork, you have got rid of that digital fat. Now, make sure that users do not scatter data again and do keep it centralized. This will make sure that your data duplication will be minimal and you can practice to generate report every now and then. Domain Enterprise Environment or BLACKboxwill make sure that users are forced to save data at central location and will not allow them to duplicate data.
Please share your ideas on this topic. It is a common burning issue faced by every enterprise.