Your files are in four places and nobody knows which one is right

On Tuesday, 20 October, The Register hosted a private dinner for senior technology, infrastructure and data leaders in Soho, with LucidLink. The event was held under the Chatham House Rule, meaning nothing said would be on the record. The main issue being discussed was the growing problem of unstructured file data.

As organisations continue to expand, distributed teams require access to this data, but the underlying infrastructure remains outdated, consisting of legacy NAS, VPNs, and the habit of sync-and-download. This approach has resulted in duplicated storage, waiting times, governance gaps, and the time wasted in determining which copy of a file is the most recent.

The core conversation at the dinner was not about the architectural diagram, but rather about what teams did when they transitioned from working in a single building. It focused on the workarounds they had adopted to pay for these changes, what broke when they attempted to retire the NAS, and what they would do differently in the future.

Participants emphasized that the dinner was not about ripping and replacing existing systems, but rather about modernising around the storage and governance investments already in place. The goal was to enhance organisation's handling of unstructured data, support distributed teams without incurring additional costs for the same file, address sync and version control, and ensure the solution remains secure in the event of a security incident.

Rupert Watson, VP GTM for EMEA at LucidLink, joined the discussion alongside Joe Fay of The Register, who moderated the event. The dinner took place at The Soho Hotel, 4 Richmond Mews, from 6.30pm to 9.00pm, with limited places available on an invitation-only basis.