For Long & Foster, the tremendous amount of coding and testing work the company conducts offshore is a rapidly swelling source of unstructured data. "This data has expanded without any significant structure or classification. While it is secure at basic levels, much needs to be done," Raichura says.

Given the amount of unstructured data that Raichura and others are forced to contend with, further allocation of resources isn't an option and is precisely why senior IT officials are poking around the ICM market in the first place, according to analysts such as IDC 's Laura DuBois.

"In talking to users, there are several key challenges they face that are driving interest in these products. The first is the sheer growth of data," she says.

According to IDC, enterprises will see a staggering 52 percent growth in data over the next year - much of it an increase in unstructured data. Besides data volume spikes, security concerns -- especially in the area of compliance -- are spurring interest in ICM, DuBois adds.

"Large firms are evaluating more automated ways in which to classify data and, in particular, unstructured data. A manual method is just not viable, given the number of files and the distributed nature of files," she says.