Digital Archiving: The Next Big Growth Opportunity In Storage

Optimus Solutions will top $158 million in sales (32% growth) in 2007 by driving the adoption of emerging storage technologies such as digital archiving.

Fifteen years ago, archiving meant hauling stacks of paper boxes to the basement or waving goodbye to the truck hauling your paper records to a storage facility. Some "high-tech" companies even had their paper records converted to microfiche. Nowadays, archives are going digital, and the digital archiving market is set to explode. By understanding the emerging digital archiving technologies and the archiving market drivers, VARs can position themselves to capitalize on this growth opportunity. The Merriam- Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, defines the word "archive" as a repository or collection of information. In the digital world, however, the term archive is not so clearly defined. It is important for VARs to understand the variations of the definition, since it will affect to whom VARs will sell archive solutions. For instance, a records management professional and an IT e-mail administrator have different definitions of an archive. The records management pro thinks of archiving as a permanent method of preserving a document or image and may be best served with an optical-based archive. The e-mail pro thinks of archiving as the movement of data from the primary tier of storage to a secondary or tertiary tier such as tape or optical and may be best served with a tiered storage solution instead of an archive.

Each method of archiving requires different forms of hardware and archival management software. However, each method shares common ground — the need to quickly retrieve archived data for various reasons such as legal discovery. It is also important to note that digital archive and data backup are not the same and should not be used interchangeably. I like the Enterprise Strategy Group's (ESG's) definition of digital archiving: "the long-term retention and management of historical digital assets that are no longer actively needed for current business operations, but have been purposefully retained to satisfy regulatory compliance, corporate governance, litigation support, records management, or data management requirements."