Data volumes may be growing at a rate of 50-80 per cent annually. The ability to effectively manage and contain this information is key to any business.

Most IT departments need to accommodate growing volumes of data and comply with regulations that require businesses to protect data from destruction, loss or misuse.

Unfortunately, the only effective solution is a bespoke one that starts with getting to know your data. How much do you know about your customer’s data?

Finding this out means working with analysts to look at partnerships, supply chain, internal working, partners and set policy. IT departments should know about their company’s speed-of-access, retained and used data, backup and disk environment requirements.

Most organisations store lots of irrelevant data. Employees hate deleting personal files, so servers accommodate everything from holiday pictures to personal letters, scans and emails.

Also, organisations themselves are often afraid to delete data, trying to keep it forever.

How much redundant data is languishing on your customer’s system? Once this knowledge is acquired, partners can develop an approach tailored to that organisation’s needs.

Many storage vendors promise life cycle management (LCM) – the movement of data through tiered storage based on usefulness, government compliance, access criteria and security.

This is a policy-based approach to managing the flow of a system's data throughout its life cycle: from creation and initial storage to the time when it becomes obsolete and is deleted.

Data life cycle management (DLM) products automate the processes involved, organising data into separate tiers, and automating data migration from one tier to another. DLM is not a product, but a comprehensive approach to information management, involving procedures and practices as well as applications.

LCM should be a given, whether it is based on virtual tape, virtualisation and deduplicaton, or inline devices. All these products have advantages, and getting the most out of them requires a bespoke solution based on a real understanding of the company’s data.

David Galton-Fenzi is group sales director at Zycko