Entries categorized under “Archiving”

The "Wow" factor. Everyone innately knows that's what separates the great from the good in any industry no matter what product or service it is that they are evaluating. Of course, no one ever really knows exactly when it is the "Wow" moment will occur and it was no different for Herbalife's Principal IT Engineer, Andy Hansen, when he was evaluating enterprise backup software products from CommVault, EMC and Symantec. (read more)

Many deduplication technologies attack the storage optimization angle at the tail end of the data management process: when it is transmitted by the backup software to a target storage device. However, some storage providers believe that as the benefits of deduplication are better understood by organizations, deduplication technology will rapidly move upstream such that it will become a core feature in more primary, value-tier and cloud storage offerings. (read more)

Moving aging, stale or infrequently accessed data from high cost, high performance production storage to lower cost, high capacity value tiers of storage can be easy to justify in enterprise organizations. However explaining the value proposition of archiving this same data in small and midsize businesses (SMBs) is sometimes less clear-cut as they may already store aging emails and file data on low cost local hard drives, inexpensive network file servers and even with Internet cloud storage providers. (read more)

First Louisiana State Court Judge Rosemary Ledet found Dell in contempt of court; then she accused Dell of making a "mockery" of the system; and then, to give her statement some teeth, she hit Dell with a $25,000 fine. Granted, a $25,000 fine is not a huge sum of money for a company like Dell and it certainly was a lot smaller than the $182,000 requested by Plaintiff's attorneys. But the tongue lashing and ensuing fine should serve as a wake-up call to all size organizations that judicial patience in regards to eDiscovery is running thin and callous or indifferent attitudes towards eDiscovery are no longer being tolerated. (read more)

Over the last few years, it is understandable why Symantec Backup Exec users may have felt a little unloved as deduplication has proliferated throughout the backup space. While NetBackup, its data protection product for the enterprise space, was getting all sorts of deduplication capabilities, the best that Backup Exec users could say was, "Hey, we can deduplicate data using 3rd party deduplication appliances." (read more)

The pending acquisition of Data Domain by either EMC or NetApp is going to have a ripple effect across the storage industry with some providers more affected by it than others. Numerous backup providers have gone on the record and told me that they are confident they can compete against Data Domain regardless of who acquires them. However, Permabit has a bigger view. It sees Data Domain's acquisition as the catalyst to the spread of deduplication beyond just disk-to-disk (D2D) backup into primary storage. (read more)

"If it really costs millions to do that [e-discovery], then you're going to drive out of the litigation system a lot of people who ought to be there." This quote by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cuts to the heart of current issues surrounding eDiscovery. A recent DCIG blog highlighted how out of control litigation costs have become and have left companies with hard decisions on whether it is best to settle cases based solely on the cost of eDiscovery or attempt to litigate. But as companies face unprecedented economic pressure, a key question comes to mind, "Are these costs driving risky data retention strategies such as destroying all of your data?" (read more)

Most organizations simply do not like to think about their backup problems. To many their backup problems feel so overwhelming and the steps to fix them are so painful and complicated that they are desperately looking for a quick fix. So when a technology like deduplication comes along that appears to do exactly that, their initial reaction is to buy it. But organizations should not fail to consider other products that include deduplication technology as part of their solution. (read more)

If one didn't know any better, one would think that deduplicating backup data is going to solve all of IT's backup pains. The current train of thought goes something along the lines of "Plug in a deduplicating appliance, point the backup software at the new appliance and, Voila!, the backup problems are solved." The only problem with that viewpoint is that deduplicating appliances alone do not solve equally pressing corporate data management problems and may even create new backup and data management challenges along the way. (read more)

DCIG has posted several blogs discussing the economic downturn, the banking crisis and the role that hedge funds played in the seemingly endless stream of bad news and frauds that have graced the headlines. So, when it was announced that the prominent hedge fund Pequot Capital was shutting down due to the SEC reopening an insider trading probe, it was another sign that the largely unregulated hedge fund industry is back once again in the SEC's crosshairs. (read more)

It isn't often that bipartisanship wins the day among politicians, but when an issue arises that stirs the ire of the public such as the credit card industry has done there is a sudden ability to get things done. This was evident in the recently passed Senate Bill 414, more commonly referred to as the "Credit Card Act of 2009." In an amazingly bipartisan vote of 90-5 the bill passed. (read more)

Last Friday, May 8, 2009, the latest unemployment figures were released by the US Bureau of Labor and it was not a pretty sight with US unemployment rates reaching 8.9% in April 2009. But that number fails to tell the whole story. Granted, a lot of individuals are now looking for work but I also speak to a lot of IT staff who are still employed that now need to get their job done plus do the jobs of the individuals who were let go. These individuals need more integrated solutions that require less time to manage, not more. In that vein, the announcement that the Hitachi Data Protection Suite (HDPS) 8.0 will continue to be powered by CommVault (now in more ways than one) should be welcomed by enterprise organizations that need a robust and integrated data management and protection solution that extends across both hardware and software platforms. (read more)

Applied Research recently surveyed 400 companies with 1000 or more employees and uncovered that 12% of them found that there is no way that their business could survive another 24 months without buying more storage. Conversely, 15% said they could go "cold turkey" without buying any more storage capacity for that same period of time. But the majority of companies (over 70%) are unsure if they need more storage capacity and, if they do, what tier of storage capacity they need. This uncertainty around what to do next probably explains the recent increases in storage utilization that companies have experienced in the last six (6) months as well as the renewed interest that companies are expressing in better managing their existing storage capacity. (read more)

On March 15th, 2009, a new law went into effect in the European Union (EU) that set in motion a controversial new course for government access into digital information. The EU Data Retention Directive was derived from the perceived need of the EU's member states to protect national security or public safety. Its goal is to provide law enforcement the access to information it needs to protect public and national interests but it may go too far by capturing too much public information that the public may not view as so public (read more)

Every organization knows its data stores are growing annually by 30%, 50% or more and, as they do, archiving is taking on a greater role to help organizations more economically store and manage this data. But, what organizations can fail to consider is the downside of not having an archival data store that can scale to meet their current and future data storage requirements. For example, today science departments across the nation are grappling with the inability to cost-effectively manage and scale their archived data stores. Their experience will provide enterprise organizations some insight into the types of problems they can avoid if they act now. (read more)

Recently Kelly Polanski (another DCIG analyst) and I had a rather lengthy discussion about the value of keeping archive and backup data on disk versus tape long term. We were both in agreement that using disk in some form as an initial backup target makes sense in most environments but as we started to debate the merits of keeping data on disk versus tape long term, the issue can get more cloudy. While DCIG has previously argued that eDiscovery is becoming a more compelling reason to keep archive and/or backup data on disk long term, the concerns we had centered on the fact that some disk-based archival and backup storage systems can become as problematic as tape. (read more)

The lead article in the March 2009 issue of Storage magazine, "Quality Awards for Midrange Arrays", finds that a remarkable 82% of respondents in the survey would make the same storage purchasing decision that they made in the past. But are these impressive numbers a sign, as the author of this article suggests, that users are truly satisfied with their current storage system? Or is it a sign of a deeper, more systemic problem in storage where users resist changing their storage system even when they are presented with a solution that is obviously better and/or more economical than the one they currently use? (read more)

A current patent infringement lawsuit has provided a great reminder of why email retention policies and procedures as well as archiving technology are invaluable in today's eDiscovery environment. While discussing policies and procedures can be a mind numbingly boring exercise, this case provided some great reminders as to why they are important in setting the groundwork for a robust and defensible eDiscovery process. (read more)

If you are like me, trying to comprehend the logic behind the current bank bailouts and the billions of taxpayer dollars being infused into the financial sector is becoming harder, not easier, to understand. For instance, Bank of America (BofA) just reported receiving $20 billion dollars in bailout money as well as loan loss commitments of another $97 billion from the federal government. Yet with BofA taking billions of unearned dollars, what can their customers expect in return? Not a thank you, as one might expect, but instead a slap in the face. (read more)

No one plans for "Domesday" scenarios because the thought is (a) if it does happen, I'll be gone anyway or (b) if it does happen, hopefully it won't happen on my watch so I will not be held accountable. But many organizations are unknowingly creating their own Domesday scenarios by selecting archiving products that take them down a path of technology obsolescence. One notable exception to this trend is Permabit with the Enterprise Archive solution which, with today's announcement of its new model 4010, demonstrates that archiving solutions and Domesday scenarios do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. (read more)

While we may think of email applications as a communication tool, the formal definition of what constitutes an individual email is changing. Regardless of an email's folder location, intent, or status, email is a vital piece of corporate electronic information and no different than any other document. Email is now much more than just a communication mechanism but a legal document of record that can be used to an organization's advantage. (read more)

Matt Kesner, the CTO of Fenwick and West and who runs the computer forensics group within that firm, even goes so far to say in a recent Symantec eDiscovery virtual round table that organizations who use social networking have lost control and it can seem sort of hopeless to get your arms around this new form of electronically stored content. But what is happening in response to this new wave of social networking is that some organizations are making employees responsible for the content they create on these Web 2.0 sites and instructing them to act as their own records managers. (read more)

The first thing that many were interested in finding out as they arrived was how many people (users and vendors) were actually in attendence. Bottom line, SNW day 1 (Monday, April 6) was pretty quiet and seemed pretty sparsely attended. The normal high profile vendor displays and grandiose announcements that often accompany SNW were noticeably absent though I received mixed reports on whether or not user attendance was up or down. (read more)

A just released March 2009 Nielsen Company report, Global Faces and Networked Places, makes some startling observations about the rapid adoption of social networking such as blogs, social media sites (Facebook), Twitter and wikis among Internet users. While many may intuitively suspect that the adoption rate of these forms of social networking is accelerating, this report removes all doubt. It highlights that two-thirds of the world's Internet population now utilize social media sites, traffic to these sites is growing at 3x the rate of other Internet traffic and people now spend 10% of all Internet time on social networking sites. (read more)

It isn't just businesses that are hurting in this down economy. As companies cut back it is having repercussions everywhere and local, state and federal government are not exempted from these cutbacks even as their requirements also increase. Case in point, a recent case decision handed down determined that the SEC must comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) just like "any other litigant" that puts the same burdens of eDiscovery and legal holds on governmental agencies that previously only affected private organizations. (read more)