Submitted by: Usman Shaw

Corporate data tends to grow at an alarming rate yet 80 percent of it usually sits idle, chocking the production environment. Data gurus claim that most of the time the bulk of the data is never referenced nevertheless it occupies production storage space and more than often creates bottlenecks in its wake. The need of the day is to archive the bulk of this seldom used data to a cheaper storage medium for long term retention. At the same time seamless search and convenient retrieval of this invaluable information is crucial to any business enterprise. A recent survey has revealed that 57% of large and medium sized concerns have a need to manage email and file server storage more effectively by offloading it to less expensive storage, 46% have a need to handle routine e-discovery requests and 34% have a need to extract older electronic content for regulatory audits.

So what should be a regular approach to data storage and information accessibility? File archiving is a definite answer.

Business and Legal concerns involved in e-discovery, storage optimization and records management always have an eager eye for efficient solutions providing:

Reduced file storage costs

Centralized file management

Reduced data volumes to help reduce backup times

Increased File Server performances

Transparent access to archived files

Intuitive search and e-discovery options.

It is imperative for them to protect their business critical information and this alone can be achieved through a potent File archiving system. Electronic information is preferred to paper documents, because it usually carries the benefit of metadata such as date and time and provides the Litigators pertinent evidence in lawsuits. Executives burdened with paperwork frantically search for new avenues to convert their records into retrievable PDF documents. Storage volume management taxes employee efficiency to a greater degree costing businesses billions in lost revenue and wasted time. Rigorous and day to day backups are essential and can only be achieved in a timely manner if an efficient File archiving solution is deployed. These day to day needs urge enterprises to adopt a user friendly File archiving solution that puts them in control and a File archiving solution such as ShareArchiver s FA solution is indeed the answer.

You must have come across the term Enterprise File Archiving. The term encompasses the following strategic areas:

1. Storage Management:

Companies are constantly struggling with the amount of data and constantly shuffle data to create space on a temporary basis; File stubbing technology greatly reduces storage by leaving a tiny stub for users to view hence reducing file server’s file data volume. The stub provides seamless access to users regardless of the desktop client in use i.e. Apple Mac or Windows. By employing de-duplication techniques ShareArchiver s FA has managed to reduce file server’s file data volumes up to 90%.

2. Centralized Repository:

A state of the art File Archiver such as ShareArchiver s FA provides a central repository for all archived material where it sits indexed and easily and very quickly searchable.

3. Data Security:

Passing on privileges to users is an important aspect of File archiving. It is important to determine what a user can access and what information is off limits. Only a privileged user can search and access the archives. This entails transparency of operations and enforces employee accountability.

4. Stable Production Environments:

Production environments must run with zero downtime. Crash programming is often high on the agenda, for companies which value a stable production system. File archiving solutions such as ShareArchiver can be a real blessing in case a production system experiences a crash. In normal circumstances data recovery can take hours especially when data size is tremendous and the date is to be restored from a backup, but using ShareArchiver this can be achieved in a matter of minutes.

5. Enhanced Productivity:

Few hours are generally wasted each day by employees, managing their historical files, or searching for important documents which may have been misplaced in the wrong place, With automatic archiving employee productivity can be enhanced manifold by giving them back time they can spend on current projects rather than searching and managing information. How do you expect an employee to search efficiently for a Purchase Order that may have been saved in a wrong folder mistakenly, a ledger restored from a backup or a misplaced digital memo. Searching can be a costly affair for companies, meaning lost productivity. Having ShareArchiver means you never spend more than a mere few minutes to restore or find that lost memo saving the organization huge amounts of time and money.

6. Policy Based Archiving:

Knowing how your file storage is being used and wasted lets you plan for more efficient ways to archive the data. Policy based archiving means having easy to use tools for reporting, analysis, and easy to set up policy rules. Files that are older than a specified time period, unneeded, or unused, based on file metadata such as Created, last modified, last accessed date, size criterion are automatically moved to a file archive where they are compressed, encrypted and stored for automatic retrieval.

7. E Discovery:

Electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal litigation. File and email Metadata such as File Creation Date, Last Modified Date, File Type and Extension, Size, sender recipients, bcc, message headers etc are information needed for the purposes of evidence. Archiving can optimise E- Discovery preparation by making digital information easily accessible.

8. Document Tagging:

Allows users to enter key information to a document known as tagging. These tags subsequently can be indexed making document search comprehensive and easy.

9. Compliance:

Regulatory bodies often require organizations to preserve electronic business records in a secure, immutable but easily accessible manner. In order to comply with these regulations File Archiving Solution is mandatory.

10. Reduced Long Backup Times:

Backing up hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes is a big nightmare. Once ShareArchiver has reduced file server’s file data volume by its state of the art file stubbing technology data backup times are greatly reduced as a result. No longer do you need to wait for hours for a backup job to complete.

About the Author: Jawad Bokhari CTO ShareArchiver Ltd.

ShareArchiver.com

is specialized archiving solution provider for Files, Emails and SharePoint.

Source:

isnare.com

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