International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, recently announced that the Software Storage Market experienced solid growth in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10) with a 7.2% growth rate when compared with the same quarter last year (see press release). 

Steve Erickson began a blog series about components of a successful Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) program in a blog posting last week.  One of his points was

The retention of information must be monitored and controlled to ensure regulatory and business requirements for retention are met, while conversely ensuring that information no longer needed is disposed of as soon as possible.

I know we are creating information at exponential rates. IDC and EMC released a report earlier this month about the growth of the digital universe (a multimedia version of the report is available on EMC's website).  The report estimates our digital universe will grow by a factor of 44 between 2009 and 2020.  I realize that much of the growth is attributable to consumer generated content, but much of it is corporate or may be something a corporation has to deal with at some point in it's lifecycle (remember United Breaks Guitars or the infamous Domino's Pizza videos)?

But as Steve pointed out above, there is no reason for a corporation to keep information or records longer than the time frame determined due to regulatory or its own business requirements.  From a risk mitigation standpoint, the records and information should be disposed of as soon as possible. 

I see organizations adopt strategies like archive all email.  There are very few organizations that would have a need to do this and if they did, it is probably restricted to just a few employees that may be required by law or regulation to do so.

The "Buy to Comply" strategy used by many hardware vendors isn't what companies need to have an efficient, effective and compliant ECRM program.  Read Steve's post to understand how Information Governance can provide the rules and guidelines about how information is to be used and managed.