Enterprise Search is Becoming More Important
– The Number of Information Sources is Growing Rapidly
Businesses receive, generate and store enormous amounts
of information. According to an analysis from the University
of California at Berkeley, 93% of all information today is
created in an electronic format. Further, more than 70% of
that information is never printed. The vast majority of
business information is generated by, and stored in, a large
number of applications, including corporate email systems,
personal Webmail systems, the World Wide Web, instant
messaging systems, wikis, blogs, customer relationship
management systems, Web conferencing systems,
imageprocessingsystems, inventory systems, DVDs, video tapes,
audio sources (e.g., Podcasts) and a wide variety of other
applications.
The number of different systems that generate and store this
information is also growing rapidly and includes desktop
computers, laptops, email-enabled cell phones, employees’
home computers, fax machines, backup tapes, archiving
systems, file servers, optical storage systems, video display
and recording systems, and a large number of other
platforms.
– The Quantity of Information is Growing Rapidly
The Expanding Digital Universe, a study published by IDC
and EMC in May 2007, calculated that 161,000 petabytes of
information were created, reproduced and stored during
2006 – three million times the amount of information
contained in all of the books that have ever been written.
The study goes on to estimate that this figure will increase by
more than six times to 988,000 petabytes by 2010. The
IDC/EMC study also estimates that while 70% of data has
historically been unstructured, more than 90% of data in the
future will be unstructured.
Organizations of all sizes are facing similar growth in the
quantity of information that they generate and store. This is
creating major problems for them in the context of
extracting value from this content.
– Problems With the Glut of Information
There are a number of problems associated with the rapidly
expanding quantity and breadth of information that
business decision makers must process:
- Too much information leads to poor decision-making
Not having the right information makes it more difficult for
individuals to make appropriate decisions and leads to
improper decisions or decisions that take too long to
make.
- Decision-makers are harmed
A 2005 study by a psychiatrist at King’s College in London
found that information overload caused an apparent 10-
point reduction in an individual’s intelligence quotient
(IQ).
- Information management becomes more expensive
As discussed in the next section, too much information
entering, used by and stored in an organization can be
very expensive, both for storage systems to manage this
data and for staff time to manage the information and
storage.
- Corporate governance becomes more difficult
Proper corporate governance and the ability to
understand what data assets an organization owns is
becoming critically important because of regulations like
Sarbanes-Oxley and the new amendments to the FRCP,
for example.
The bottom line is that too much information can harm
individuals and businesses in profound ways.
To view the full text, please download the PDF version here.
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The Expanding
Digital Universe,
a study
published by IDC
and EMC in May
2007, calculated
that 161,000
petabytes of
information were
created,
reproduced and
stored during
2006 – three
million times the
amount of
information
contained in all
of the books that
have ever been
written. |
