There are many people who think when they back up their data and software to a storage device or save it on cloud storage then it will automatically save and protect the entire data. But it is not true because when you will ask a data storage and management expert he will tell you that backing up data is not enough and there are various steps that has to be taken to properly manage and store data. This is because when we talk about storing data there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution handily available until you have an adaptable data storage solutions provider at your disposal.

It is very important to understand where and how to store the structured and unstructured data. For doing this individual as well as companies have to understand the type and amount of data they have to backup. This understanding will help to know what medium to take, whether moving to the cloud would be appropriate or building on-premise solutions or taking help ofadaptable data storage solutions would be ideal or combination of all the three solutions would do the task.

So the question here is how to formulate a good data storage management strategy? As per experts there are some steps that can help you to select the right data storage solutions and make sure that the data is properly retrievable and protected.  Here are the steps that can help you to sort out the things related to data storage pretty easily:

Know the type of data to store: It is a fact that not all data is created equal. So there is a need to understand the business value of data because it is very critical for formulating the storage strategy. There are some question which needs clear answer for formulating data storage management policy. Questions like how quickly to backup data if lost?How fast there is a need to access the data? For how long to retain the data? How much secure the data needs to be? What are the rules and regulation to be followed prior data backup? These questions greatly helps in coming up with a lot more clear vision for data storage solutions.

2. Don’t overlook unstructured data: Like said earlier data is mostly structured and unstructured but is important in every sense. So there is a need to think how to combine the multi structured data from a company’s transactional systems with the unstructured or semi-structured data from network file systems, E-mail servers, cloud storage etc. This is really important to take into consideration as the data management platform the company selects must hassle freely allow to combine all the structured and unstructured data without months or years of data modeling effort.

3. Know the compliance requirements: Data storage management is very complex as data is very important and critical for a company especially if it is a publicly traded company or operating within a highly regulated industry like financial services. Leakage of data or data lost or leaking of confidential information is something that cannot be expected from any organization. This is why it is important to understand every minute detail about the compliance and security of the data before proceeding ahead.