Business Value Analysis-Market Research Reporteval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/customer_successes/b-bva_mr… · Business Value Analysis™ Market Research Reports 3 ... Prevalence

Business Value Analysis Market Research Report

Archiving and e-Discovery

Business Value Analysis-Market Research Report

Table of ContentsExecutive Summary 3Business Value Analysis™ Market Research Reports 3Archiving and e-Discovery MRR methodology 3Technology solution justification and validation 3Key findings in business drivers 4Key findings in business value 4

Trends in Business Drivers 5Manage email storage growth and reduce its cost 5Deduplicate email and unstructured (non-email) storage 5Retention of corporate records 5Implement data-expiration policies 6Prevalence of data-expiration policies 6Improve e-discovery execution, quality, and speed 6Time spent in e-discovery 6Move email to less costly storage 7

Trends in Business Value Analysis 7Email and unstructured data deduplication 7Tiered storage and expiry policies 8IT and legal e-discovery processes 8IT help desk and end-user productivity 8

Conclusion 9

Additional Survey Results 9Respondent profile 9Financial justification required but limited resources available 9Pre-deployment analysis resources 10Post-deployment analysis resources 10Trends in business drivers: growth in email data storage 10Trends in business drivers: growth in other data storage 11Time spent restoring email 11

© 2009 The Alchemy Solutions Group All rights reserved Business Value Analysis, BVA, Total Operational and Economic Impact, and TOEI are trademarks of The Alchemy Solutions Group, Inc

Archiving and e-Discovery - 3

© 2009 The Alchemy Solutions Group All rights reserved

Executive SummaryBusiness Value Analysis™ Market Research Reports Information technology (IT) organizations need clear markers for valuing investments; the ability to generate business value proof points is therefore critical The Business Value Analysis (BVA) Market Research Report (MRR) series helps create those proof points by answering the following two questions:

• What business drivers compel IT organizations to implement particular technology solutions?

• Post implementation, which areas have generated the greatest total operational and economic impact?

This MRR identifies business value trends in Archiving and e-Discovery, which are essential for protecting data and keeping businesses running efficiently and effectively

Archiving and e-Discovery MRR methodologyThis MRR draws on two major data sources

The first is a survey recently completed by Symantec customers and other organizations Respondents represent a broad range of industries, geographic areas, and sizes They

were queried about their recently implemented or upcom-ing archiving and e-discovery technology solutions Their responses paint a vivid picture of the latest trends driving technology procurement decisions

The second data source is a large and growing stockpile of recently published BVA studies by The Alchemy Solutions Group These exhaustive Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI)™ research studies analyze an organization’s challenges, its chosen technology solutions, the conse-quent project rollout and IT transformation, and the lessons learned—what worked and why

Technology solution justification and validationMore than 50 percent of survey respondents are required to justify their proposed archiving and e-discovery solutions in fi-nancial terms—but fewer than half are given the tools to do so This leaves a significant percentage of IT organizations with out the means to fulfill their justification mandates (Chart 1)

Similarly, nearly half of the respondents are denied the op-portunity to validate whether the solutions delivered the expected operational and economic benefits Significantly, when respondent organizations are given post-deployment analysis support, most of them proceed to gauge the benefits received This underscores the widely recognized importance of benefit validation—and the failure of most companies to meet that need (Chart 2)

For a complete exploration of methodology, solution justifica-tion and validation, and more, see Additional Survey Results

Chart 2 For IT Organizations Given the Opportunity, What Percent Benefit was Realized?

Chart 1 Is IT Financial Justification Required? Are Resources Available?

4 - Archiving and e-Discovery


Key findings in business drivers

Overall, the survey found that the same decision criteria that drove archiving and e-discov-ery purchases in the last two years will drive, to a similar degree, these purchase choices in the next two years

Managing email storage growth: This was the number one business driver for the past two years and will be again for the next two years Email data stores are growing by more than 20 percent per year at 70 percent of respondent organizations, regardless of company size Firms are experiencing similar growth in their print and file data stores Growth in Microsoft SharePoint Server data stores is much slower, especially among small to midsize businesses (SMBs; fewer than 500 employees)

Deduplicating email and unstructured data: Taken together, deduplication of stored email and unstructured data actually surpasses email storage growth as the number one business driver, both for the past two years and the two years ahead (see above) Deduplication is an especially strong driver at large enterprises (5,000 or more employees)

Improving retention of corporate records: The next strongest driver for over the next two years is the need to properly address corporate records retention Its importance surged by 15 percentage points compared with the last two years

Implementing data-expiration policies: The next strongest driver for the upcoming two years also surged in importance by 15 percentage points compared with the last two years More than two-thirds of respondents report having data-expiration policies in place for email; however, the percentage is much lower at large enterprises Considerably fewer respondents report having expiration policies for print and file data and Microsoft SharePoint Server data

Improving e-discovery execution, quality, and speed: Two-thirds of respondents perform 11 or more discoveries each year In the absence of an archiving and e-discovery solution, each discovery takes four days or longer to complete

Moving to less costly email storage platforms: A strong business driver over the last two years, this factor diminishes in importance in the two years ahead—especially among SMBs and large enterprises

Key findings in business value

The BVA studies documented the following significant savings in several business value areas:

Email and unstructured data deduplication: Companies reduced their email archives by 30 percent to 60 percent, saving on average more than $123,000 each year For unstruc-tured data, these firms saved an average of more than $700,000 annually

Tiered storage: By moving data from tier one to lower cost tier three storage, firms saved from 44 percent to 88 percent of the storage cost The average company saved $362,000 annually

Data-expiration policies: Automated data-expiration policies enabled organizations to trim archives by as much as 72 5 percent, saving an average of $100,000 per year in reduced storage costs



IT and legal e-discovery processes: Companies cut time spent in discovery by nearly 90 percent on average—about 780 hours—and saved $145,000 in labor costs every year

IT help desk and end-user productivity: IT help desks cut the time spent on end-user email tasks by an average of 98 percent, or 1,800 hours, and gained more than $75,000 in increased productivity, every year Organizations that eliminated email quotas saved their employees an average of 113,000 hours and gained more than $717,000 in enhanced productivity each year

Trends in Business DriversThe survey asks Symantec global IT customers and other organizations to select their top three criteria for making archiving and e-discovery procurement decisions over the last two years, as well as their criteria for planned procurements over the next two years

Manage email storage growth and reduce its costOver the last two years, the number one reason to deploy an archiving and e-discovery so-lution, cited by more than 70 percent of respondents—and even stronger among technolo-

gy firms and large enterprises—was to address the unremitting growth in stored email volume Nearly 60 percent of respondents indicate this factor will also drive their implementation decisions over the next two years (Chart 3)

For a more complete exploration of the growth trends in stored email and unstructured data, see Additional Survey Results

Deduplicate email and unstructured (non-email) storage The second strongest driver over the last two years, cited by nearly one-half of respondents, was the need to deduplicate email storage data The per-centage drops somewhat over the next two years

That drop presumably reflects the fact that email deduplication has become more common-place in recent years

However, the need to archive and deduplicate unstructured, non-email data—including Microsoft SharePoint and file and print data—is on the rise, more than compensating for the expected drop in stored email deduplication It was cited as a driver by roughly one-third of respondents over the last two years, and by nearly one-half of respondents looking ahead to the next two years

Taken together, email and unstructured data deduplication form the number one business driver for archiving and e-discovery solutions over the next two years The need for both types of deduplication is strongest at large-enterprise firms

Retention of corporate recordsThe implementation of corporate records retention policies is also on the rise One-quarter of respondents cited it as a business driver in the last two years That percentage rises by

Chart 3 Business Drivers for Archiving and e-Discovery Solutions



about 15 percentage points—even more among technology companies, though the need for such policies is present among organizations of all sizes—when respondents assess their needs over the next two years Technology companies appear especially eager to implement corporate records retention policies

As with data-expiration policies, described below, organizations appear to be discovering the foundational importance of implementing records retention policies within an overall archiving and e-discovery approach

Implement data-expiration policiesLikewise, the implementation of data-expiration policies is on the rise While only 20 percent of respondents cited it as a driver over the last two years, that percentage grows by about 15 percentage points—enterprise-size firms (500 to 4,999 employees) account for much of this growth—when respondents consider the next two years

The majority of respondents already have expiration policies in place for email data, sug-gesting their soon-to-be-implemented data-expiration policies will principally address expiration issues for Microsoft SharePoint and file and print data

Prevalence of data-expiration policiesHow prevalent are data-expiration policies today? It depends on the kind of data in question For stored email data, expiration poli-cies are in place at nearly two-thirds of respondent organizations This percentage drops by about one-third, to 44 percent of firms, when firms are asked about policies related to file and print data expiration Only 37 percent of respondent companies maintain expiration policies for Microsoft SharePoint Server data (Chart 4) Interestingly, enterprise-size firms participate in every data-expira-tion policy category at nearly twice the rate of large enterprises

Improve e-discovery execution, quality, and speedOver the last two years, 20 percent of respondents chose their archiving and e-discovery solution at least in part to better respond to external e-discovery regulations (such as the Sarbanes–Oxley Act) A slightly higher percentage cite external regulatory requirements as a factor in purchasing decisions for the upcoming two years

Similarly, about 20 percent of respondents report they considered e-discovery quality and speed when making their archiving and e-discovery decisions over the last two years A similar percentage cite this factor in their plans for the next two years

Time spent in e-discoveryHow much time do firms spend in e-discovery? It varies enor-mously About one-third of respondent organizations annually undertake 10 or fewer discoveries, while more than one-quarter perform 31 or more discoveries each year (Chart 5)

Without an e-discovery solution in place, more than 35 percent of respondents—the single largest category—report that each discovery takes four to five days About one-third of respondents say the duration is between one day and three days Another 30 percent of re-spondents report an average discovery process of six or more days With the majority of firms

Chart 4 Do You Have an Expiration Policy in Place?

Chart 5 Number of Annual Discoveries



taking at least four days per discovery, there appears to be a strong need to speed up the process (Chart 6)

Move email to less costly storage A need for less costly email storage devices helped drive ar-chiving and e-discovery decisions for 30 percent of respondents over the last two years That percentage drops significantly, mostly among SMBs and large enterprises, when respondents assess their archiving needs over the next two years It may be that less costly email storage management practices are already well established, so a smaller percentage of firms will require that solution in the years ahead Enterprise-size firms, it appears, will continue driving this market in the near term

Trends in Business Value AnalysisArchiving and e-discovery solutions deliver business value in two principal ways The first is when they enable organizations to properly manage the email and unstructured data that is created, passed through, and ultimately stored by corporations today Data overload could degrade an organization’s overall system performance and cost it a fortune The right archiving and e-discovery solution dramatically reduces labor costs, makes greater strategic use of resources, and replaces inflexible and costly storage techniques and time-consuming manual processes with streamlined, automated, and cost-effective information access and management

The second major business value derives from efficiently and fully complying with external (government) and internal regulations and legal discovery motions In this regard, archiving and e-discovery solutions protect firms from the consequences of noncompliance—princi-pally, fines and adverse legal judgments—and promote efficiencies

Email and unstructured data deduplication At many or even most organizations, the bulk of data storage—for email, print and file, Microsoft SharePoint Server, etc —is devoted to multiple copies of documents Eliminating this duplication translates into tangible cost avoidance for storage hardware, the reclamation of email storage space, and overall efficiency improvements

In the BVA studies, companies using deduplication techniques were able to reduce their email archives between 30 percent and 60 percent, saving on average more than $123,000 each year For unstructured data, these firms saved on average more than $700,000 annually (Chart 7)

Chart 7 Average Annual Storage Cost Avoidance From Deduplication

Chart 6 Average Days IT Spent on a Discovery



Tiered storage and expiry policiesFirms in the BVA studies also turned to tiered storage techniques to cut costs—moving less critical data to more cost-effective storage platforms and, through improved data ac-cess, speeding data-request responsiveness Moving data from tier one to less expensive tier three storage saved firms from 44 percent to 88 percent of the cost of housing their information The average company saved $133,000 each year

Likewise, firms in the BVA studies benefitted from being able to automatically delete email and unstructured data as various retention periods expired The use of automated expira-tion policies enabled firms to trim archives by as much as 72 5 percent, saving an average of $100,000 per year in reduced storage costs

IT and legal e-discovery processesResponding to compliance audits and discovery motions requires fast, efficient information access If handled manually, however, it becomes very time consuming For example, re-questing the stored data for a certain time period and rebuilding the original file systems—including restoring deleted emails—could take days Printing the information and combing through it for particular words or categories of information could take many more The

entire procedure consumes invaluable labor resources, especially among attorneys and IT staff members who could be dedicated to higher value tasks

Similarly, the lack of automated procedures puts organizations at risk For example, in recent years several technology companies received multimillion-dollar fines for failing to put legal holds on relevant email Firms that establish and enforce corporate policies for email retention reduce their legal risk

In the BVA studies, firms with enhanced e-discovery solutions were able to slash the time required to conduct legal and regu-latory searches, some by more than 80:1 Other companies eliminated regulatory fines, with some sparing themselves more than $2 million in unnecessary costs every year On average, companies in the BVA studies managed to cut 96 percent of the time spent in e-discovery—about 1,700 hours—to save more than $70,000 in labor costs every year (Chart 8)

IT help desk and end-user productivity Managing end-user email issues—from implementing restores to enforcing quotas—is a costly area for IT groups and end users alike

In the BVA studies, IT help desks reduced the time spent on end-user email tasks—such as restoring emails, helping meet email quotas, fixing personal storage table (PST) file issues, and more—

by an average of 98 percent, or 1,800 hours, per year This added up to more than $75,000 in increased productivity every year (Chart 9)

Similarly, when companies in the BVA studies eliminated email quotas, they freed end users from having to actively manage their email boxes This resulted in average annual savings of 113,000 hours and more than $717,000 in enhanced productivity

Chart 8 Annual Hours Saved on Discoveries

Chart 9 Annual Hours Saved on Email-related Issues



ConclusionWhat does the future hold for IT investment in archiving and e-discovery solutions?

The survey results strongly suggest that IT organizations have many compelling reasons to develop new archiving and e-discovery solutions and improve on existing ones And the BVA studies published by The Alchemy Solutions Group demonstrate that these solutions save substantial money and time

The trends in archiving and e-discovery business drivers, identified in the survey, map well with the BVA-identified business value trends That is, archiving and e-discovery solutions that effectively address IT business drivers—mainly by driving down storage costs, boost-ing labor efficiencies, streamlining data access, and accelerating processes—will generate exceptional, quantifiable TOEI

Organizations will make better decisions if they can determine, prior to implementation, whether a proposed solution is destined to succeed IT procurement should be based on solid financial projections, otherwise the enterprise as a whole will not be able to evaluate the impact of a key business investment Greater access to resources enables IT groups to finan-cially justify their procurement requests and validate the benefits to the larger organization

Additional Survey ResultsRespondent profileSurvey respondents represented the following regions: Europe–Middle East–Africa (EMEA); Asia–Pacific–Japan (APJ); and the Americas (Chart 10)

The surveyed organizations represent virtually all sectors—from healthcare to education—although they are mainly concentrated in four industries: telecommunications, technology, business ser-vices, and financial services (Chart 11)

Organization size varies greatly as well Slightly more than 40 per-cent of the firms are large enterprises, employing more than 5,000 people; nearly one third are enterprise size, with between 500 and 4,999 employees; and finally, the 27 percent that remain are consid-ered SMBs, with fewer than 500 employees (Chart 12)

Financial justification required but limited resources availableIT organizations are no longer isolated in a solely technological role in the work environment and therefore embrace business value as a core deliverable

The survey bears this out Slightly more than 50 percent of respon-dents are required to justify archiving and e-discovery solutions in financial terms The percentages are higher among enterprise and

Chart 10 Survey Respondents by Geographic Region

Chart 11 Top Industries Responding to Survey



large-enterprise firms, at 70 percent and 59 percent, respectively (We presume the percentage that actually provide financial justifica-tion is even higher This is because archiving and e-discovery pro-curement requests are more likely to be granted if the proposed so-lution can be shown to be economically advantageous to the larger organization IT organizations should therefore be motivated, if not strictly required, to financially justify their procurement requests )

Pre-deployment analysis resourcesThe financial justification impera tive borne by 52 percent of re-spondent organizations exceeds the availability of analysis sup port resources, with barely 46 percent of respondents reporting they

are given access to such resources That means more than one-half of IT organizations are ill-equipped to accurately determine the economic value of a proposed solution It is worth noting that enterprise and large-enterprise firms are somewhat more likely to provide these resources than their SMB counterparts

Post-deployment analysis resourcesAbout 55 percent of respondents are able to evaluate their new solution’s total operational and economic impact after implementa-tion (Chart 13) (SMBs do a slightly better job than their enterprise and large-enter prise counterparts in providing their IT groups with valida tion resources ) With so many IT groups unable to assess whether their archiving and e-discovery solutions actually paid off, it is easy to imagine much of the corporate world investing in poor solutions without ever knowing it

More than 75 percent of the respondents who are given the oppor-tunity to validate their archiving and e-discovery solution benefits after implementation do so The results, however, are mixed About 55 percent reap more than 50 percent of the anticipated gains,

while about 45 percent gain 50 percent or less of what they expected Nearly 30 percent of respondents report realizing 81 percent or more of the anticipated benefit; 10 percent find benefits beyond their expectations It should be pointed out that SMBs and large enterprises report receiving more of the anticipated benefit than do enterprise-size firms For example, nearly 55 percent of large enterprises realize 81 percent or more of the expected benefit

The survey results suggest, however, that archiving and e-discovery solution benefits fall short of some IT organization projections SMB and large enterprises report gaining more benefits than they expected compared with their enterprise-size counterparts Companies will have to do a better job of matching expectations with results They can do this by providing their IT organizations with greater access to resources for financially justifying procurement requests and validating the benefits to the larger organization

Trends in business drivers: growth in email data storageHow fast are email data stores growing? More than 45 percent of survey respondents—the single largest category—report stored email volume growing annually by between 21 per-

Chart 12 Company Size: Percentage of Survey Respondents by Number of Employees

Chart 13 Does IT have the Opportunity to Validate Operational and Economic Impact after Deployment?



cent and 40 percent For another 25 percent, email storage growth exceeds 40 percent each year That means for a sizeable major-ity, about 70 percent, email storage is growing by more than 20 percent each year, and only a minority, roughly 30 percent, indicate annual growth that is 20 percent or less These statistics are largely consistent across organizations of all sizes: SMB, enterprise, and large enterprise A clear message thus emerges: email data stores are growing significantly at virtually every organization (Chart 14)

Trends in business drivers: growth in other data storageHow fast are data stores growing for file and print data and/or for Microsoft SharePoint Server data? File and print data growth is roughly similar to that of email storage This is true across organiza-

tions of all sizes, with a single exception: enterprise-size firms report that most of their file and print data growth occurs in the 20 percent-and-under and 41 percent-and-over ranges; only one-quarter of these firms report growth in the 21 percent to 40 percent range

Stored Microsoft SharePoint Server data is growing much more slowly For example, com-pare the percentage of respondents who report SharePoint Server volume growing 20 per-cent or less each year—56 percent—with those who report email storage volume growing that slowly—29 percent Growth in stored SharePoint Server data is slowest among SMBs, with 75 percent of those respondents indicating SharePoint Server data growth of 20 per-cent or less For enterprise and large-enterprise firms, nearly 40 percent report growth in the 21 percent to 40 percent range; an additional 25 percent of enterprise-size firms report stored SharePoint Server data growing at 41-plus percent

Time spent restoring emailTwo survey questions reveal that email restores are a large drain on many IT organiza-tions—though relatively few respondents cited it as a business driver

The number of email restores that organizations undertake each year is roughly the same at both the low and high ends of the spectrum About 20 percent of respondent organizations perform fewer than 10 email restores per year; the same percentage of firms perform more than 50 email restores each year Overall, respondents are about equally divided between those engaging in fewer than 30 and those engaging in 30 or more email restores each year (Chart 15)

There is near-equal distribution across the spectrum in the time spent per email restore Roughly one-quarter of respondents spend fewer than 15 minutes per email restore, about 30 percent spend between 15 and 30 minutes, and another 20 percent spend between 31 and 45 minutes Finally, about one-quarter of respon-dents spend more than 46 minutes per email data restore

Chart 15 Annual Email Restores

Chart 14 Anticipated Annual Percentage Growth in Data Volumes



The Alchemy Solutions Group www.alchemygroupinc.comThe Alchemy Solutions Group is a global management consulting and marketing research firm providing program level support to senior IT, sales, marketing, and customer reference professionals in Fortune 1000 companies Alchemy’s Research and Publishing services help clients assess the economic impact of leading technology solutions in the global supply chain

The Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI)™ Research Practice delivers public and private research services that measure a product’s positive and potentially negative impact in post-implementation environments Alchemy’s Business Value Analysis (BVA) Market Re-search Report (MRR) is one of the public communication mediums available for this research

Alchemy leverages deep industry expertise and formal research best practices to help busi-ness leaders understand the key attributes of and constraints on corporate performance TOEI research enables our clients to make decisions based on the operational and economic impact of select products and services, and help support integrated, marketing best practices

Stanley King — Managing Director [email protected] MD of The Alchemy Solutions Group, Stanley King is responsible for establishing strategic relationships with executives who are committed to understanding the economic impact that products and services have in the global supply chain King’s international sales and market-ing experience and ongoing research efforts provide industry executives with the candid insight required to educate employees, customers, and their extended supply chains The repurposing of TOEI research has proven valuable in terms of IT procurement, product de-velopment, go-to-market planning, enterprise sales, and long-term customer support

Prior to founding The Alchemy Solutions Group, King served in the software industry for 19 years, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, executive management, field opera-tions, and sales management With global experience in large technology companies like Oracle and in smaller technology start-ups, King brings a wealth of insight in the support of Research and Publishing efforts at The Alchemy Solutions Group

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Business Value Analysis-Market Research Reporteval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/customer_successes/b-bva_mr… · Business Value Analysis™ Market Research Reports 3 ... Prevalence