Historically, keeping data was imperative. Storage was expensive, so early systems would belch out a stack of paper reports that had to be reviewed tediously. Systems evolved to having canned reports and third party reporting solutions. Next, came Business Intelligence and data warehousing. Now, with cheaper plentiful storage some CIOs have declared that they will keep all of the data forever.

Do you need all of that data? What is the total cost of ownership to your company? Having the right data is key.

Here is an interesting Forbes article about keeping too much data and how to avoid it moving forward:

Another interesting article from Risk Management. also has an interesting arcticle on the issues of having too much data. It includes an estimate that e-discovery coult cost you $17,000 per gigabyte: