Unstructured data represent more than 80% of the data we have in our professional structures (mail, emails, Word files, Excel, PDF, JPG, PNG, AVI, MOV, CAD, MP3, etc.). In the middle of this ocean of computer files and in this forest of papers, there are the data that we must organize, identify, disseminate, protect and process. In other words, they represent the “bazaar” we don’t know what to do with. Among these data, there are those that are very useful, those that are very sensitive, those that we keep just in case… and those that we prefer to keep because we do not know who they are used for. Similarly, there are all the ones that we destroy because we just don’t know how to classify them. And it’s only after we realized it would have been wise to keep them.
Unstructured data abound! they spread deep into the tree structures of our servers, hard drives, USB sticks and various clouds. They hide among thousands or even millions of other data that are equally dismissive of the short time we have to find it. Too much volume, too many treeviews, too many storage media are the source of our organizational problem!