Ediscovery and enterpise search provider Nuix and Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), an IT analyst firm, have released a report  examining how organisations can dramatically reduce their storage and eDiscovery costs by deleting outdated, redundant and trivial data.

The report, Defensible Deletion: Quantifying the Benefits by ESG analyst Katey Wood, identifies five-year cost reductions of up to $1 million for small organisations, $4.75 million for medium-sized organisations and nearly $20 million for very large enterprises.

These figures are based on estimates that 50% of data in organisational stores is redundant, obsolete or trivial. Organisations can achieve further savings of similar magnitude by reducing eDiscovery costs as a result of deleting unnecessary data.

“There’s a strong consensus that organisations have no reason to continue storing redundant, obsolete, or trivial data outside of regulatory or legal preservation mandates – this data has no business value and may pose a liability,” said Wood.  “Despite this, organisations struggle to execute their data remediation plans.”

The report found that creating and enforcing defined policies around data retention helps organisations:
Avoid or defer storage costs including hardware acquisition, maintenance, labour and data centre resources;
Reduce future eDiscovery costs by limiting the amount of data they must produce; and
Minimise risks of litigation or regulatory action stemming from data past its mandated retention period.

“Major barriers organisations encounter include the inability to identify specific content within their data stores, and having large quantities of data not easily accessible or searchable, for example in old applications or tape archives,” said Wood.

The paper examined Nuix’s defensible deletion solution and its capabilities to index, search and analyse all organisational data stores, including archives and retired applications. This makes it possible to classify data that must be retained, can be expired or presents a risk to the organisation.

“Organisations should not wait for the pain of legal or regulatory action before taking steps toward defensible deletion,” said Eddie Sheehy, chief executive officer of Nuix. “They can achieve tangible and rapid return on investment and risk reduction using Nuix tools to provide intelligent, automated and defensible data remediation.”