There are numerous challenges facing IT departments today as they deal with reduced budgets, smaller staffs, and ever-increasing demands on the development of business-critical applications. Solving the Challenges of Exponential Data Growth will examine how these challenges are exacerbated by the amount of data a company receives and its movement throughout the Corporate Information Factory. The paper explores the reasons why data volumes are increasing and where bottlenecks most frequently occur. It then explains why adding more hardware isn’t a solution to these performance problems and delves into the various methods that can be used to break through the bottlenecks to speed applications. Next, a case study is included that demonstrates how GALOSI, a recovery auditing services provider, handled its performance issues and found the right solutions to meet its needs. The discussion then turns to the importance of transforming data and utilizing metadata to enhance application performance. All of this information is designed to help IT departments gain the performance advantages necessary to meet today’s challenges head on.