As part of the IBM Information Lifecycle Governance business, StoredIQ will advance IBM’s efforts to help clients derive value from big data and respond more efficiently to litigation and regulations, dispose of information that has outlived its purpose and lower data storage costs. We firmly believe that StoredIQ’s ability to lead and innovate in this space will be significantly stronger as part of the IBM team. Together, IBM and StoredIQ can empower organizations to more efficiently use and govern their unstructured data to increase its value and eliminate unnecessary cost and risk.

In the press release, Deidre Paknad, vice president of Information Lifecycle Governance at IBM commented:

“CIOs and general counsels are overwhelmed by volumes of information that exceed their budgets and their capacity to meet legal requirements. With this acquisition, IBM adds to its unique strengths as a provider able to help CIOs and attorneys rapidly drive out excess information cost and mitigate legal risks while improving information utility for the business.”

Managing Data In Place

One of the benefits StoredIQ brings to the IBM product suite is our ability to manage data where it natively resides. The StoredIQ Platform was designed as a smart, strategic weapon to help corporations discover, analyze, and act on terabytes to petabytes of data, in-place, including data classification, records management, compliance, eDiscovery, and storage optimization. In a recent analyst note, Gary MacFadden with Parity Research discusses the acquisition and wrote:

“One of the key differentiators for StoredIQ has been its philosophy of leaving unstructured data such as documents, emails, images, and other text-based files where they reside rather than moving data to a central repository in order to index and manage it. For large organizations trying to manage petabytes of unstructured digital content contained in hundreds or perhaps even thousands of local and geographically dispersed locations across their enterprise, attempting to consolidate data to a few physical or logical locations is time consuming, expensive and often counterproductive – assuming data aggregation is even a viable option.”

One Platform, Countless Benefits
Built on a powerful, unified platform that dynamically manages data in place, StoredIQ dramatically improve the speed and reliability of information management, lowering eDiscovery costs and compliance risks while meeting the stringent requirements that IT departments demand.  With StoredIQ, you can take Big Data head on to:

• Find information relevant in critical litigation matters
• Know what information is no longer needed, and could be deleted with confidence
• Better respond to regulatory and other inquiries
• Solve big data problems and manage information more efficiently to reduce cost and risk

With StoredIQ, companies gain a comprehensive, unified solution to minimize the cost and risk of managing the ever increasing amount of unstructured data stored across the enterprise in file shares, email, content management systems, SharePoint, laptops, or in the cloud. The capabilities within StoredIQ’s solutions allow organizations to break down litigation preparedness, defensible records deletion, compliance adherence and storage optimization initiatives into targeted, practical projects that deliver improved efficiencies and rapid ROI. Gary concludes in his Parity Research blog post:

“With the addition of StoredIQ, IBM has an additional solution set to provide its clients with both tactical and strategic benefits. Given, the momentum of IBM’s ILG solutions group and the fact that StoredIQ has already been an ILG partner for several years, the integration should be relatively seamless, and StoredIQ should be a much-valued addition to the ILG portfolio.” 

Consistent with IBM strategy, IBM will continue to support and enhance StoredIQ’s clients and technologies while allowing them to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio. IBM intends to incorporate StoredIQ into its Software Group and its Information Lifecycle Governance business. StoredIQ’s goal with this acquisition is to deliver even more value to our customers going forward, as the StoredIQ software is more deeply integrated with IBM Information Lifecycle Governance solutions. Driven by a firm belief that StoredIQ will enjoy even greater success as part of the IBM Company, we look forward to StoredIQ and IBM’s future together with great enthusiasm! 

For more information about the StoredIQ acquisition, please read the press release and the FAQ document. Or, email us at info@storediq.com.

We’re happy to announce that the StoredIQ Platform was named as a KMWorld Trend-Setting Product of 2012. This is the fourth year in a row that StoredIQ has been honored with this annual and prestigious award, which highlights products that demonstrate clearly identifiable technology breakthroughs that serve the vendors’ full spectrum of constituencies, especially their customers. This year, more than 700 products were assessed by KMWorld’s judging panel, which consisted of editorial staff, analysts, system integrators, vendors, line-of-business managers and users.

Providing a powerful, infinitely scalable platform for Big Data management, the StoredIQ Platform enables organizations to gain visibility and control over unstructured data to meet their eDiscovery, records management, governance, compliance and storage requirements. The StoredIQ difference is our ability to dynamically index and analyze data in-place. It’s a practical approach that dramatically improves the speed and reliability of information management. The StoredIQ Platform was chosen for this unique approach to managing Big Data.

StoredIQ continues to extend its Platform solution to provide customers with deep intelligence and understanding into business critical data. This is why StoredIQ is again on our list of Trend-Setting Products. – Hugh McKellar, editor in chief of KMWorld

We are very pleased that KMWorld has recognized StoredIQ for our market-leading active information management solution. To be recognized a fourth time by KMWorld and its judges as a Trend-Setting Product of the Year is a testament to our commitment to help organizations manage their information according to its business value while reduce cost and risk.

Utilize intelligent overlays to spot potential issues.

As we worked with customers over the years on information management initiatives from eDiscovery, information governance, storage, and records retention, one common theme bubbled up over and over…customers needed a simple tool to give them a comprehensive understanding of their unstructured data.

To meet those needs, today StoredIQ introduced DataIQ, an innovative application designed on the StoredIQ Plaform that reduces the complexity of understanding and analyzing Big Data. DataIQ was designed as a quick start data intelligence application that empowers customers with knowledge about their data to better plan and prepare for any information management project.

“Every company has more data than it can manage. But few can precisely locate it, assess the value of it, or make much sense out of it when they need to. Information management projects can be very intimidating.  To set a course for success, organizations need to build insight regarding the whereabouts, meaning, and usage of their data.” –Ted Friedman, VP and distinguished analyst, Gartner

DataIQ gives organizations a simple, low-cost, visualization solution to understand their unstructured data — without first moving it to a repository — to help answer questions such as:

• How much data do you have across your enterprise?
• What are your largest repositories?
• How much old, un-used data do you have and where is it?
• Who owns data that is violating corporate policies?
• Which data is relevant to your business and which is just taking up space?

DataIQ scales from terabytes to petabytes, from single corporate offices to global enterprises, and provides a single, holistic view across a multitude of enterprise data sources and hundreds of file types — without moving any data from its native location. DataIQ gives companies the ability to:

• Identify – interesting subsets of information without moving any data across the corporate network
• Analyze –  data using advanced visualizations to spot compliance violations, get out in front of the eDiscovery process, make infrastructure planning decisions, jump start records initiatives, etc.
• Act – copy, collect, move data that requires further processing or retention; defensibly delete data that provides negative value to the company

Pricing and Availability

DataIQ is currently in Beta and will be generally available in August 2012. DataIQ is priced as a subscription model based on TB or PB of data under management. For additional pricing information, contact StoredIQ for a DataIQ quote.

Learn more about DataIQ today!

• DataIQ Web Page
• DataIQ Datasheet
• Request a DataIQ Demo
• Sign Up for the DataIQ Webinar on August 2nd

Whether you’re a CIO, IT manager, records or compliance officer, or corporate counsel; the e-book is designed to get you out in front of the challenge of managing the ‘Truth About Big Data’ in your organization. It’s the first in a series of booklets that will unravel the myths behind what Big Data is, and the management solutions that will work to unlock its value.

Big Data is now synonymous with ‘volume, variety, velocity, and value’ which relate to how much data you have, how many data types there are, how fast the data is changing, and what potential impact the data might have on your business. Unmanaged, unstructured data is the primary source of Big Data growth, as well as the cause for IT and corporate pain. Decreasing the risks and costs, and increasing the value of managing Big Data assets is a corporate imperative.

After many conversations with industry analysts, customers, and other companies struggling with data management issues, we’ve identified a core list of ten things every CIO should look at as they engage in Big Data projects, and they may not be what you think. This booklet calls into question some long-standing beliefs about how companies should manage their data.

Download the ‘Truth About Big Data’ and begin your Big Data conversation today!

The report cites StoredIQ’s innovative, proactive approach to indexing and classifying data as a key differentiator in eDiscovery and Information Governance.  Since StoredIQ indexes and classifies data well before a discovery action, companies retain only the information that is required for either legal or business reasons. Because of this, organizations are better prepared for potential eDiscovery, pay less for storage and archiving — and gain better information governance and more effective information management for business decision support.

Taming Big Data means breaking from the traditional model of continuously moving data to new storage repositories reactively. We believe our inclusion in Gartner’s Cool Vendor report is confirmation that StoredIQ’s ‘active information management’ solutions provide the kind of unique benefits that resonate in today’s market – from real-time data intelligence to proactive eDiscovery and policy-based governance.

[1] Gartner “Cool Vendors in Risk Management, Privacy and Compliance, 2012″ by Carsten Casper, Khushbu Pratap, French Caldwell, Andrew Frank, Robin Wilton, April 24, 2012.

“Typical governance solutions haven’t kept pace with the growth of social data, the evolution to a collaborative environment, or the multitude of collaborative content types. StoredIQ’s Platform helps NewsGator Social Sites 2010 customers manage this risk in an efficient and cost-effective way.”

-Christine Taylor, Analyst, Taneja Group

Social business and collaboration data is as important to an organization as traditional enterprise data contained in email and file shares, and it requires all the governance, risk management and compliance capabilities of traditional enterprise communication methods. StoredIQ provides a holistic information management solution for both traditional and social business data, without any additional burden on enterprise business users.

Addressing the myriad of legal, records management, and compliance issues that arise when social computing comes into play can be complex. Regulations are plentiful and violations are expensive. It is critical that companies consider their strategy for supporting secure collaboration within the structure of their security policies and also within the context of existing federal regulations. StoredIQ’s partnership with NewsGator ensures that collaboration flourishes and enterprise security interests are proactively protected.

You can read more about the StoredIQ and NewsGator partnership here.

In a recent Network World article, Warning you may be an eHoarder, Jeff Vance discusses the growing problem with “eHoarding” and also gives the following 10 signs that you might be an eHoarder:

1. You can’t locate the delete key on your keyboard.

2. You save every single version and variation of any document you ever create because you never know when that one turn of phrase or clever analogy you cut out might be useful somewhere else.

3. You rarely sort items out of your inbox and into folders.

4. You use your inbox as a de facto address book.

5. You regularly sign up for e-newsletters but never unsubscribe from ones you don’t read.

6. You spend more time hunting for important documents and files than actually working on them.

7. Your desktop is cluttered with enough icons to wallpaper your office.

8. When you do delete a document, you feel a sense of foreboding and suspect that you may have made a terrible mistake.

9.  You have more thumb drives than you can keep track of, many of which are pretty much duplicates of each other.

10. Remember those old CD-ROMs you used to back up your data to? You still have them. Worse, you even have floppy disks, although you have no vintage computers that could even read them.

We have to confess that we are guilty of many of these infractions, and we’re sure you or someone you know in your organization is guilty too. And while eHoarding isn’t life threatening like hoarding possessions or even animals, it does cause a problem for an organization.  We’re not talking just end user productivity issues (…where did we put that document with the stats on this?) but also major legal risk.

With storage available for cheap, it’s easy to let data stack up. According to AIIM, 1GB of data costs 20 cents to store, but that same 1GB of data costs on average $3500 to review. When you start talking terabytes, petabytes or even in some cases zetabytes of data, you are talking SIGNIFICANT eDiscovery and review costs.

But, luckily for you and any other organization suffering from eHoarding, you can get help! StoredIQ’s active information management solution can help you combat eHoarding by providing a method for defensible data deletion and information governance practices.  Download our Defensible Data Deletion solution brief to learn more.

“What would you do with the power to do more?”

That’s what Dell was asking attendees at their annual DellWorld conference back in October, and Michael Tran, StoredIQ’s own Senior QA Engineer, had a winning answer- “My more is helping people discover valuable data.”

Michael is one of the inspired thinkers featured in Dell’s newest campaign “The Power To Do More”, and we here at StoredIQ couldn’t be more proud!

Check out Michael’s profile page here and his live video response here.

For more information about how StoredIQ can help your organization discover valuable data, visit www.storediq.com or contact us today at info@storediq.com.

In a recent article in Information Management Magazine, Dodd-Frank Act Puts Focus on Information Governance, authors Fred Pulzello, and Sonali Bhavsar suggest that the regulations stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act (Dodd-Frank) should prompt financial organizations to change the way they look at information governance.

What does this mean for financial organizations? Since Dodd-Frank increases the focus on comprehensive recordkeeping as well as establishing robust compliance practices, organizations should examine their current business and data governance practices to make sure that they are in compliance.

As Dodd-Frank is implemented, financial organizations should ask themselves:

• Do we have the systems capabilities in place to identify, track and preserve the required records?
• Is now a good time to perform a holistic data assessment of the information and records our firm currently has stored across all data repositories, content management systems and archives?
• Are we able to implement defensible data deletion policies as prescribed by the new Dodd-Frank requirements?
• Can our current data storage and archiving capabilities withstand the volumes for day-to-day reporting and historical archiving? If not, how can we strategically clean up our data storage?
• Will new technologies be needed to assist, and what does the implementation timetable look like to be in compliance?

Here at StoredIQ, we believe that establishing an actionable information governance plan will help financial organizations comply with these new stringent requirements for record keeping and reporting.  Taking a proactive approach to information management will help financial organizations to reduce risk, preempt litigation and avoid fines by identifying and securing documents as required by law.  Also, it will ensure that valuable business information is safe and accessible to authorized personnel only, according to regulatory compliance requirements and corporate access policies.

To learn more about how StoredIQ’s actionable information governance solutions can help you manage your data to meet Dodd-Frank requirements, contact us today at info@storediq.com or visit www.StoredIQ.com.

Make 2012 the year you get your corporate data in shape! Intelligently reduce “Big Data” for more effective and efficient eDiscovery and information governance.

StoredIQ’s new service offering for defensibly reducing enterprise data is designed to ease the burden of identifying, analyzing and collecting matter-relevant information. The StoredIQ Defensible Data Deletion solution utilizes the StoredIQ Platform to help organizations gain insight into business-critical information distributed across the enterprise. By applying intelligence to the governance of Big Data, organizations can reduce the overall corporate data volume by up to 80%, significantly improving the efficiency and success of their eDiscovery initiatives while reducing legal cost and risk.

Explosive growth from unstructured data continues to impede the legal discovery process. According to a recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) survey, 69% of corporate counsel indicated that working more closely with IT and records management to expire and delete data to limit unnecessary data retention for future litigation requests was the most important priority facing their internal eDiscovery process. Legal and compliance issues typically trigger urgent IT and legal triage, but putting out these fires reactively doesn’t solve the larger problem of poor data governance– often the source of significant costs for large eDiscovery data productions. Minimizing long-term cost and risk requires proactive solutions to reduce irrelevant or “junk” data, and better understand where responsive, regulated or litigious data may be located.

“Defensibly deleting non-business data minimizes future productions for legal and regulatory requests, including the often significant eDiscovery labor and costs for identification, collection, processing, and costly downstream attorney review. Whether during the immediate eDiscovery response or as part of an initial plan for better proactive preparation and ongoing compliance, StoredIQ can offer corporations immediate cost savings and ongoing risk avoidance.” – Katey Wood, Enterprise Strategy Group

StoredIQ Defensible Data Deletion – Key Phases

Phase 1 – Identify: Find data at a granular level; understand its current and potential business value across your enterprise including within: Content and Records Management Systems, Email, SharePoint, Desktops/Laptops, and Archives.

Phase 2 – Manage: Classify data according to retention and disposition policies, and compliance mandates including: PII, PCI, FINRA, Dodd-Frank, Legal hold, Aged /obsolete data, and Non-business data.

Phase 3 – Act: Manually or automatically take corrective action to: Protect, Delete, Expire, Migrate, Store, and Optimize data.

To learn more about StoredIQ’s Defensible Data Deletion solution, stop by the StoredIQ booth at LegalTech — #214 — download the Defensible Data Deletion solution sheet, or email us at info@storediq.com.