Why CIOs Need A New Approach To Unstructured Data Management
CIO, Friday, January 16th, 2026
Unstructured data isn't an asset by default - it's a liability until CIOs govern, lifecycle and curate it for AI-ready value.
CIOs everywhere will be familiar with the major issues caused by collecting and retaining data at an increasingly rapid rate. Industry research shows 64% of enterprises manage at least 1 Petabyte of data, creating substantial cost, governance and compliance pressures.
If that wasn't enough, organizations frequently default to retaining these enormous datasets, even when they are no longer needed. To put this into context, the average useful life of most enterprise data has now shrunk to 30-90 days; however, for various reasons, businesses continue to store it indefinitely, thereby adding to the cost and complexity of their underlying infrastructure.