By Susan Marks
Network World, 12/24/01

DRIVE FULL. MAILBOX OVERLOADED. DISK IS FULL. Messages such as these are part of everyday life on a network as companies struggle to manage information.

The reminders are supposed to signal users to delete files and get unnecessary or outdated data off networks. Usually originating from a source such as Systems, Lotus Notes Administrator or Network, the user can't respond. Although meant to be innocuous, the unwelcome intrusions almost always elicit complaints, and sometimes even animosity and resentment toward network staff. The result can be a power struggle between IT, whose job it is to keep the network and systems running smoothly, and anyone who wants to store data. IT is perceived as the bad guy who arbitrarily wants data off the network and out of the database, making life difficult for all.

" 'LAN is full.' They're always saying that and there never seems to be any rhyme or reason," says one typical disgruntled user on a large network.

IT vs. the rest of the company is a natural conflict, one that complicates already-difficult technology decisions and ultimately saps the value that IT systems provide. Data storage doesn't have to be a battlefield, but it often is because disposal rules are typically omitted from corporate information-management policies, says Steve Weissman, president of consulting and research firm Kinetic Information. "Everyone is wrapped up in capturing and storing data, not disposing of it," he says.

Disposal guidelines

Experts agree that network executives who have developed sound data-disposal policies - usually in collaboration with other department heads, top corporate officials and the legal department - can end clashes between IT and users over how much network and systems space everyone is afforded.

Such is the case at Ashland, a Fortune 250 chemical and petroleum company in Covington, Ky. It has had an information management policy for more than 20 years that doesn't illicit rancor between network staff and the rest of the company, says Roger Craycraft, CIO. Stan Lampe, Ashland spokesman and a longtime company employee, agrees. Whether data deletions are software-generated or voluntary, there just aren't problems, he says. "It's just something you manage."

Unfortunately, no one-size-fits-all technology solution answers the data disposal problem, Weissman notes. Instead, it is an exercise in business process analysis and review. Who needs to know what, when, under what conditions, in what context, and what are the tools to facilitate that access?

For some types of data, such as medical or tax records, laws regulate minimum retention requirements, but for other information little direction exists. Conceivably, documents could be dumped from a database onto a tape and stored forever. However, the issue then becomes accessing a tape drive that can read the data or a program to process it, says Bob Zimmerman, director of storage research for Giga Information Group.

One solution for data overload is often automatic deletions at the end of a set retention period. At Ashland, that's 90 days for e-mail. At the University of Massachusetts, e-mail gets 60 days before being disposed of automatically, says Ethan Katsh, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Department of Legal Studies and director of the University Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution.

Capacity, not time, is the measure used at Giga, Zimmerman says. Zimmerman gets 75M bytes of e-mail storage on the network. When he exceeds that, which is regularly, he gets an automated warning to delete files - he calls it a "nasty-gram." If he doesn't comply, he gets a second notice. If he still doesn't clean out his mailboxes, the system prevents him from sending e-mail or receiving any that have attachments.

A storage hierarchy

A network professional's biggest mistake would be to ignore the issue and let people keep stockpiling their e-mails and other data, Weissman says. Storage comes with overhead costs, and indexing, management and network integration challenges. "The one thing you want to avoid is bringing the business to a slowdown because the piece of information someone needs, they can't find. They forget which server it is on, something crashes, or a directory goes down," he says. In such instances, IT becomes the scapegoat.

It's all about hierarchical storage management (HSM), Zimmerman says. HSM software makes decisions about documents, in e-mail or elsewhere, based on age and size, and in accordance with preset management policies. It can enable the automatic migration of archival data to offline or near-line storage that's usually robotically accessible. Then files move transparently back to the disk when a user accesses them. The user only knows that the first reference to the file was a long seek, Zimmerman says. The point is getting the data off the high-performance, expensive front-line storage while still being able to access it when necessary, he says.

HSM products include Veritas Software's NetBackup Storage Migrator, Tivoli Software's Tivoli Storage Manager, K-Par Archiving Software's Archimedia, Computer Associates' HSM for NetWare, Legato Systems' Legato Application Availability Management Solutions, and CaminoSoft's Highway Server.

However, not everyone subscribes to infinite storage space - even if it is hierarchical - as the answer (See “To delete or not”). Imagine trying to find a tiny item in an attic as big as a baseball stadium where everyone keeps everything they ever possessed. That item might never turn up, says Pat Tagtow, senior counsel for BMC Software in Houston. Data disposal must be a facet of any prudent records-management program, he asserts.

BMC instituted its information management system, including data deletion, during a business boom about two years ago. "It was a quick growth period where we could foresee that if we didn't institute a policy of organizing the information and managing how long we keep it and how we keep it and such, that it could get out of hand," Tagtow says.

The driving force wasn't the need to destroy or delete information, but rather sound business reasons, adds Mark Lagodinski, BMC manager of records management. His department is responsible for implementing BMC's data retention and disposal policy. It's a task made easier, he says, because the company approaches it as an information management issue, as opposed to a data-disposal issue, and from the beginning was upfront with employees.

Highly visible executive buy-in came early on, with the CEO and legal counsel explaining on videos the individual and company benefits of information management, Lagodinski says. Employees received e-mails detailing the benefits and a comprehensive, policy book that included schedules on how long different kinds of documents would be retained on the network. Managers also received training on the new procedures so they could go back to their teams and discuss it.

If employees instead had just been hit with rules and guidelines and a firm policy, then perhaps they would have resisted IT, Tagtow says. But most employees today don't even mind the automatic network reminders that a document is nearing the end of its life. They welcome the notices (courtesy of the company's recordkeeping software, TrueArc's ForeMost Enterprise) as guidance on what to keep and for how long, Lagodinski says.

Setting policies

What is happening at companies such as BMC Software and Ashland, says Kinetic Information's Weissman, is the emergence of an operational philosophy that builds on old records-management practices and incorporates them into today's dynamic e-business environment. While Ashland disposes of e-mail after 90 days, for example, it will keep other documents, such as a study that did not yet turn into a project, perhaps for two years after completion. Deletion would then be manual, Craycraft says.

Historically, regulations and laws have driven most of the data-retention decisions at Ashland. But in general, the company tries to understand what the retention need is for all data in the system, Craycraft says. The IT department works with lawyers, accountants and other interested parties, including users, to ensure the best policy, he adds.

Talking to all involved parties and finding creative ways to honor their interests is essential to resolving any issue or dispute, including data disposal, says Karl Slaikeu, president and CEO of Chorda Conflict Management, a consulting and training company in Austin, Texas. The result is an integrative solution, as opposed to a blanket edict. After all, the goal is compliance, not foot-dragging and low morale because someone's interests are violated, he says.

Network executives must be involved in, if not initiating, the discussions, Weissman says.  "You can't know how to orchestrate your technology tools until you know what the policies are. . . . You don't want a fellow on the technology side to just simply create the policies on his own and then start flushing data, because that affects the business. At the same time, you don't want the business people promulgating directives that may be impractical on the technology side. It very much needs to be a partnership."