We IT experts all agree: When it comes to IT issues, employees often act awkwardly and pose a potential security problem. In the eyes of many IT employees, the user eventually became a DAU (stupid user to be accepted) and consequently from as far as possible freed of all tasks and processes that have something to do with IT. It is completely overlooked that every user, no matter how non-IT, can make valuable contributions to IT and the file system. This article shows you why you should put selected archiving and data management functions in the hands of your employees in order to significantly improve user efficiency, storage and administration costs, transparency and, last but not least, the security of your file system.
Before there were file servers, data in the form of documents and folders was stored in filing cabinets. If the accountant needed a new file, he labeled a folder and sorted it into the appropriate place in the filing cabinet. Of course, neither the caretaker nor the installer of the filing cabinet did that. And of course the department manager decided which employee should receive a key to the filing cabinet.
The current division of tasks is comparatively absurd: the file server has long since replaced the filing cabinet, the principle of systematic filing of documents in different folders has remained. Likewise, the need to regulate access to documents and organize filing.
But precisely these tasks are hardly possible today without the help of the IT department, which determines the usability of the file server for the users, but at the same time acts with superficial knowledge of the requirements of the departments on their "digital filing cabinet".
The competence of the users is not used!
Every user of the file system knows their own area of responsibility and their own data better than the IT department. With this competence, it would be easy for the employee to determine a suitable storage location for a specific document or to create one. And the department head may not know how his PC works, but he knows very well which employees are allowed to access his department's data - and which are not! The competence of non-IT users logically does not lie in the technical administration of the file server, but in the design of the practical use of the data storage. However, the IT department is almost always responsible.
The result: chaos instead of order
This unfortunate distribution of tasks contributes significantly to the current state of the file server, which can be described as chaotic, especially in larger companies, without exaggeration. An average of 80% of all data is completely out of date and, distributed in tons of folders, blocks the view of the relevant company data. The discussions on numerous file server restructuring projects at migRaven GmbH showed that users no longer wanted to work in the outdated, confusing structures that had previously been dictated to them by the file system. And it also became clear that the user knows very well which data he is currently actively using and which he simply wants to archive.
reboot required
It is therefore time to involve the user in a clearly defined framework in the design of the file storage, in the broadest sense in data management, in order to slow down the uncontrolled data growth and increase efficiency and security.
Two observations support this approach: Due to the rapidly increasing demand, storage will become an increasingly scarce resource in the next 5 years, a forecast demand of 175 zettabytes contrasts with just 21,9 ZB by 2025 available storage. "If there is not yet an unexpected breakthrough in new storage technology," said a specialist article in the Storage Insider, "[...] the provision of this amount of storage capacity will become a problem". So rising costs must be expected.
In turn, a survey by Veritas Technologies says that the ROI of data management solutions is already 118% and that as data continues to grow, it will become a matter of course in every company. The most important obstacle so far has been the "lack of employee involvement".
The art of using the competence of the user
With migRaven.24/7 the competence of your own employees regarding your own data can be used for the first time without help from the IT department. Important here: The user doesn't care about storage capacity or authorization concept. All he has to do is look at the use of his files, which he has to search between tons of other files every day.
Right here comes migRaven.24/7 and makes decisions of the employees such as "I need a folder for this file", "I want to work with employee XY" or "These files are probably no longer needed" with just a few clicks in the file system within the scope of the options administered by IT around.
The file system changes within a very short time. New folders for projects, for data exchange or for internal processes are consistently created in the appropriate main folder (e.g.: projects) and are visible there for exactly the employees who have been granted access. The vast amounts of outdated files and folders have already disappeared from the user's field of vision and can now be accessed via a central archive link in the file system.
The short-term exemption from old data alone brings a significant improvement for all employees in dealing with the filing structure. But the effect of migRaven.24/7 is much more sustainable. The file system gets rid of the entire historically grown folder structure within 1 to 2 years, while all newly generated data has long been in the right place. Process, project and exchange data are neatly separated and provided with correct access rights and, if applicable, an archiving date.
What happened? A summary:
migRaven.24/7 was installed and from the second day on delegated simple data management tasks to the users of the file system. Specifically, IT is exempt from creating folders, assigning access rights and archiving old data or creating the archiving rules. This happens automatically and consistently through simple actions that users trigger while working with the file system. Obsolete data is disappearing over the course of a few weeks. And after a year there is hardly anything left of the historical excesses of the folder structure.
And IT is taking a break?
Would be nice. There is enough to do in IT and not only data growth, but also human security gaps will continue to accompany us.
However, it can reassure you that people, even your own DAUs, can provide important impulses in IT if suitable tools such as migRaven.24/7 support them.
From DAU to data controller
by Jan Engelmann and Torsten Blatt
Special, weak point employees, 2/2020, p. 26f
At some point, all users of the file system were freed from all IT tasks and processes, if possible. It is completely overlooked that every user, no matter how non-IT, can make valuable contributions to IT and the file system.
This article shows: It is time to involve the user in data management in a clearly defined framework in order to slow down the uncontrolled growth of data and to increase efficiency and security.
