KMWorld Article: Tackling extreme data volume

Tackling extreme data volume

By Hugh McKellar - Posted Apr 1, 2009

We all know of the imperative of managing the extreme—and sometimes debilitating—volume of data in today’s organizations. In early March, Digital Reef emerged from two years of stealth mode to tackle that problem by introducing what it claims is a new approach to discovering and managing unstructured and semi-structured data.

The company says its massively scalable platform is designed to address critical business issues—such as e-discovery, data risk mitigation, knowledge reuse and strategic storage initiatives—that aren’t currently properly addressed using traditional solutions. Digital Reef says that as the volume of data expands unchecked, enterprises take on more expense and more risk.
"In the sea of solutions focusing on e-discovery and enterprise search, Digital Reef uniquely understands the requirements of data center infrastructure and contextual content management," says Tony Asaro, founder and senior consultant, The INI Group (http://contemplatingit.com). "This combination sets Digital Reef apart from other players. From a data center perspective, Digital Reef’s solution uses grid architecture to meet the performance requirements for indexing massive amounts of data.

"[Digital Reef] has a truly federated view of all of the data regardless of physical location, and the solution transparently works with all file systems from NTFS to WAFL to ZFS. From a content management perspective, Digital Reef combines intelligent keyword search with its unique similarity engine to enable users to efficiently access the appropriate and relevant information they seek."

Digital Reef says its namesake platform allows customers to: locate specific kinds of data, including sensitive data like Social Security and credit card numbers; identify regulated data for compliance; pinpoint relevant documents for pending legal action; and find intellectual property that can be reused for competitive advantage.