Integration of dataglobal Dg Suite

dataglobal GmbH announced the integration of its dataglobal dg suite with Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) to extend its classification capabilities for legacy data on all Windows Server platforms.

   dg suite unifies Storage and Information Management

An enterprise-class storage and information management software solution, dataglobal dg suite delivers data classification, migration, archival and retrieval capabilities. With its new FCI extension, dataglobal dg suite is able to analyze and classify Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows and Windows Server 2003 data files at a deeper content level than ever before possible, allowing organizations to streamline eDiscovery, better manage information governance and compliance, augment and automate records management, improve security and reduce storage costs.

"Unstructured content makes up 80 percent of the data in today’s organizations, and it is the most difficult data to manage and leverage because it is stored across multiple systems such as content management, email and file systems with zero visibility into what it is," said Wolfgang Munz, CEO of dataglobal. "This lack of insight results in significant business issues because there is no way to know which information is valuable and which is useless. Using FCI with dataglobal dg suite enables application and platform independent file classification to be extended to an entire enterprise, ensuring that the right data is maintained on the appropriate storage infrastructure commensurate with its priority to the business, delivering significant cost savings and capacity management capabilities to large enterprises."

FCI, one of the core features of Windows Server 2008 R2, brings data classification to the server level by providing an identification system based on properties defined by administrators, delivering a platform that can manage data and storage resources within the enterprise. FCI enables Windows 2008 R2 data to be classified according to its business value or how often it needs to be accessed, with the most critical or often-used data stored on the fastest media while other data can be stored on slower and less expensive media.

An automated, centrally managed storage management platform, dataglobal dg suite has the ability to scan over ½ billion data files per hour in the data center, enabling administrators to regularly analyze the composition of their data storage. Combining the FCI data classification capabilities with dataglobal dg suite to extend this classification across the enterprise allows administrators to scan, classify, sort, migrate and archive Windows files in a more detailed way than before, while enabling individual files to be quickly located and retrieved as needed. The result is the first storage platform capable of delivering real-time data intelligence on a daily basis, enabling vital resource allocation and capacity management decisions in today’s data centers.

"Understanding the value of your data for the day-to-day operations of your business, (how quickly it needs to be accessed and by whom), is fundamental to designing an effective storage infrastructure strategy that leverages current investments into a more efficient, more manageable information infrastructure," said Eric Jewett, Microsoft, Marketing Director, Windows Server. "With Windows Server 2008 R2 FCI, companies can implement data classification across the workgroup and when used with dataglobal dg suite, they can perform enterprise-wide automated data classification management across several data centers, enabling a sustainable storage strategy that can deliver a huge reduction in both storage unit and storage management costs."

Microsoft FCI offers an API that allows dataglobal dg suite to enhance FCI functionality, delivering centralized administration and management capabilities that elevate FCI to an enterprise level by providing a centralized method of defining classification properties and rules that can be propagated to all the servers in the data center. As a result, administrators can create even more flexible and granular policy classifications that can take action when certain criteria, established by the network administrator, are met.

As a result, organizations are able to:

• Classify and categorize files based on metadata and content data
• Centrally define and flexibly manage classification and action policies
• Automate data management based on these actionable policies and classification
• Perform file management tasks based on the file classification defined by the administrator, rather than on only simple information such as the location, size, or date of the file.
• Generate reports about the types of information stored in the enterprise.

With dataglobal dg suite and Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 R2 FCI, organizations have a way to quickly and easily gain insight into their information. Armed with this insight, organizations can intelligently decide what information is valuable from a knowledge perspective or related to retention schedules or relevant to litigation or eDiscovery.

The dataglobal dg suite Analyze module is an analytical engines using pure mathematical power to index, analyze, classify and manage massive amounts of electronically stored information across formats, across locations, and with a degree of speed and accuracy that is unprecedented in the industry. It can also gather the classification properties defined in individual Windows 2008 file servers and extend those capabilities to legacy files located in Windows 2003 and other data files to forge a common set of rules that can classify the data across an enterprise. Actions taken can include additional classification of data or migration or archiving of files and setting retention parameters. dataglobal dg suite can find and delete files that have exceeded their retention period. dataglobal dg suite also provides administrators with a visual dashboard and array of reporting capabilities enabling the system to seamlessly and transparently collect data on the classification, analysis, assessment and actions taken to create reports as needed for the administrators.

The installation of dataglobal dg suite can be completed in half of a day to minimize operational interruptions, a critical point to meet the needs of corporate data centers. Finally, no server reboots are needed during installation, ensuring a completely non-disruptive set up process. dg suite’s powerful capacity management tools enable data center managers to measure current loads, test for anticipated loads, and gather usage trends over time. At the same time, its decision report tools enable the organization to understand total costs across the data center by tracking resource usage to specific applications and user groups. Usage based reporting enables the chargeback of IT assets. As a result, today’s storage administrators can utilize dg suite’s tiered storage policies, its data reduction capabilities and reporting capabilities to effectively manage capacity growth.

"The reality is that most organizations do not have enough insight into their stored data to properly manage what must be saved and what can be deleted with any degree of confidence," Munz continued. "Since they have no way of efficiently analyzing the data, most organizations simply keep it – and submit to rising storage costs with no end in sight. dataglobal dg suite and Microsoft FCI can provide huge savings very quickly by allowing for massive storage reclamation."

dataglobal has more than 1,800 installations in over 40 countries worldwide are a testament to the performance of dataglobal’s products. Customers include 3M, AUDI, E.ON, Group Deutsche Börse, Knorr-Bremse, Mars and Voestalpine. dataglobal also boasts a list of technology partners that include Microsoft, EMC, HP, Hitachi, IBM, LSI, NetApp, Permabit and Oracle (Sun Microsystems.) dataglobal is headquartered in Germany with  regional offices on the west coast of the United States and in Romania.