Structure the unstructured data

Internet has opened the gates for information and that too in plenty. Today
the amount of information flowing is so high that managing it has become a
crisis. This has resulted in unstructured data, which is any data lying
unorganized.

According to Gartner, white-collar workers will spend anywhere from 30
percent to 40 percent of their time this year managing documents, up from 20
percent in 1997. Similarly, Merrill Lynch estimates that more than 85 percent of
all business information exists as unstructured data — commonly appearing in
e-mails, memos, notes from call centers and support operations, news, user
groups, chats, reports, letters, surveys, white papers, marketing materials,
research, presentat-ions and Web pages.

A group of CIOs recently gathered in Chennai under the auspices of CIOL
Enterprise Connect to discuss on how to manage the unstructured data in their
organization. According to the CIOs, only 20 percent of data in their
organization are struct-ured, rest remains unstructured. The alarming fact is
that this unstructured data is integral for any organization.

Few years back managing unstructured data wasn’t the headache of CIOs,
remarked VC Kumaran, IT Head, Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd.
"But today the management has realized that huge valuable data is available
in the unstructured data. So we are now involved in capturing these tacit
information for the benefit of the organization," said Kumaran, who is
currently involved in a project where the company are trying to capture the
unstructured data.

Capturing of the unstructured data involves key issues such as collection of
data, sharing of information, storage and search facility. "For this
endeavor to be successful, there should be involvement from the people. Unless
users are not involved, it won’t be a success," felt Kumaran.

Whereas J Vijayaraghavan, Director (IT), Alstom Ltd, perceives the problem as
being where today the data is available in multiple formats — fax, e-mails,
tape and various other electronic formats. "Earlier all data was available
in hard copy alone now there is a mix of hard copy and electronic data. Today
there is such an explosion of data, that the CIOs are confronted with the issue
of where to store them, for lack of space to store these information becomes a
question."

Even Vijayaraghavan feels that retrieving the required information is a
problem just because there are so many varieties of storage devices.

From the vendor’s perspec-tive, HP business manager (south network storage
systems) Ranganath Sadasiva said that it’s good to hear that there is more
demand for storage, "But it’s a challenge at the same time to address
this market. With the increasing need for managing data, innovation in
technology is also coming up to meet the demand," he added.

(CyberMedia News)