Why archiving still makes sense in today’s IT landscape

Commvault is taking the task of archiving and making it a business tool that can boost productivity and manage data for enterprises and SMEs.

Businesses need a solution that does more than simply storing emails - instead, businesses need rapid access to information and confidence that all compliance challenges are being met, says Commvault.

According to Gartner, 61% of organisations say 'dark data' represents the most immediate opportunity to transform their business.

On top of this, IDC says up to 60% of business-critical information is stored in email and other electronic messaging tools.

"Commvault's Simpana archiving solutions helps identify and generate business value from data sets which are often left stagnant in long term retention locations, and increase efficiency by indicating which data could be deleted or moved to (even) cheaper storage layers – like cloud," says Commvault.

"Simply put, email offers an untapped goldmine of competitively advantageous data that can take your business to new levels when correctly managed and with appropriately quick access enabled," Commvault says.

Commvault integrates archiving and back-up in the Simpana platform, that is unique in the market and helps evolve the way businesses manage data like no other, says Simon Probert, Nextgen sales director.

Bringing together archiving and back-up with a single platform has many benefits, including reduced cost, risk and complexity, as well as increased efficiency and productivity.

It also solves information management problems that are governance related, including compliance as well as corporate and legal, e-discovery.

In terms of compliance, Probert says the legal discovery in an email context is very important.

"Existing Commvault customers in New Zealand have experienced the need to perform urgent data retrieval for legal reasons.

"Searches can be done and refined in a few minutes and data can be handed to the appropriate source - with almost zero cost and meeting PCI requirements," says Probert.

Probert says Commvault is currently closing a deal with a government department in New Zealand which will be using archiving to take old data and move it to a cheaper and more efficient storage solution.

"They want access to data, they want it all there and there to be no deletion. Commvault can do this seamlessly," he says.

"It's also cost saving - it will save important data for a relatively small cost. It makes old email systems run faster and makes it easier to manage mailbox quotas," he says.

Probert says email archiving is about space and compliance - businesses want to take up less space and have greater compliance procedures.

"With email archiving, businesses can produce emails efficiently without spending time and money on legal discovery, which can be a six figure bill," he says.

"[CommVault's archiving tool] is a single place to manage data more proficiently. It's the proactive and reactive steps to manage the data problem - saving storage, money resources, managing compliance," says Probert.

Also adding significant value is the fact that Commvault can help with automated classification. It can classify based on dates, type of file, content of the article - for instance anything that mentions cloud, says Probert.

Furthermore, users can search the archive to find what they need in all of the old data.

"Search is the key that wraps it together," Probert says. "It's search that gives you the context - every document with cloud, payroll, fraud, can be found. With the single tool you'll get one set of results.

Cloud based email solutions are becoming increasingly grounded in the market, and therefore all Commvault archiving tools work with Office 365 and users can augment Office 365 with Commvault, says Probert.

On top of this, Commvault can archive data between clouds, creating cost savings, he says.

"Cloud can be used as an archiving tool. Here costs are more transparent and ubiquitous access becomes easy," says Probert.

Commvault can implement whatever makes the most sense for a business - whether that is primarily a cloud, on-premise or hybrid solution.

"This is great for the end-user as the software doesn't have to be re-programmed to move, and data can be retrievable while it moves and when it's there," he says.

Commvault is distributed by NextGen Distribution in New Zealand. Contact Simon Probert, NextGen sales director, for more information via email or call 09 972 3128.