Active Navigation selected by Combined Arms Center to help consolidate and manage its data ahead of migration to SharePoint

Active Navigation has been selected by the Combined Arms Center (CAC) to help consolidate the content in its Warrior Reference Library  in preparation for its migration to SharePoint for the ongoing management of its data. The challenge is to reduce the amount of information saved on its storage area network, in order to allow data to be managed more effectively and to reduce ongoing costs.

CAC chose Active Navigation after a demonstration and pilot project that focused on metadata tagging a sample of 140GB (approximately 250,000 files) of its content to identify which data would be migrated and which would be removed. The results showed that acceptable accuracy in the tagging could be achieved in just 15 hours. A further evaluation found that completing the equivalent process manually for the 3 million files destined for SharePoint migration would have cost up to $20 million in labor and taken several years to complete.

Following the success of the pilot, Active Navigation’s methodology is now being used to roll out the program across CAC’s data centers, cleansing Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT) data to help reduce content by up to 40% ahead of its move to SharePoint.  It will also provide a structure to help the organization to effectively maintain its data once the migration has taken place.

“We had spent more than two years searching for an efficient method of meta-tagging to facilitate the migration to SharePoint,” said Davin Knolton, Chief Information Officer of the Combined Armed Center. “Active Navigation came out as the clear leader in this niche market and has the capabilities to do everything that we require and more. The project with Active Navigation so far has been a great success and we look forward to continuing this collaborative effort in the future.”

“The process of managing unstructured content can be costly and time consuming, particularly if done manually, which can be a particular problem for large organizations,” said Peter Baumann, CEO of Active Navigation.  “Our solution is currently used by a number of government and defense bodies, so we fully appreciate the difficulties presented by sensitive data and the need to comply with legislation. Active Navigation presents a time and cost-effective solution to this growing problem. By enabling ongoing maintenance and data management, we help to arm organizations against future data problems.”