While most departments in an organization have a specific speciality--such as developing products and services or managing human capital--IT finds itself responsible for the technology that supports these groups. IT has already proven itself as a group of technology experts, but there are further challenges that compel the need for IT, particularly those who are chartered with storage management, to better understand information as a corporate asset. One of these specific challenges is breaking the information sharing and collaboration barriers created by individual application deployments. With a renewed perspective, IT and storage managers--the custodians of corporate information--can improve access, availability and security. IT staff, including storage managers, have the opportunity to extend the value of information and optimize corporate resources by deploying technology enablers, such as ECM solutions, as part of their information infrastructure.

As businesses innovate, regulations morph and new business challenges arise, information can be the foundation for revenue expansion and cost control. In order for this to happen, IT must take steps to alter its perspective and implement a flexible infrastructure that can accomodate the organization's need for retaining more information for longer periods of time, providing secure access to this data and creating opportunities for it to be leveraged by multiple business departments as well as external constituents such as partners and customers. Organizations cannot continue to entrap information within primary applications or data management tools for fear of the cost of non-compliance with regulations or a regulatory breach. The costs may go beyond monetary concepts as paying attorneys to manually read through electronic evidence may not be measured solely in economic impact but also in lost time. Lost revenue, brand damage and litigation risk carry intangible expenses that many organizations do not want to deal with, especially if they can be mitigated with the appropriate information infrastructure.