Organizations are storing and using more data than ever before. Data volume is growing exponentially, and government regulations and competitive pressures are increasing—forcing organizations to retain more data for longer periods of time. But budgets are flat or being cut. And as everyone becomes more dependent on digital information, the costs of losing any of it are increasinglypainful.

If your data systems are unavailable, you can lose revenue opportunities; in today’s on-demand world, customers will simply go elsewhere if you can’t helpthem immediately. Business disruptions can cause customers and partners to lose confidence in you. Serious outages and breaches are reported in the media all the time, causing embarrassment in the market.

The bottom line is that organizations need to do a better job of protecting data assets, and as these assets grow and budgets shrink, you need to do more with less. You need smarter solutions.

This paper addresses the challenge of managing and surviving the tidalwave of data and describes various options available from IBM to deal withthe challenge by effectively reducing the amount of data that must be managed.