Recently I read an entry on Informationweek titled, "The Value of a Storage Administrator," by George Crump. He wrote this article to express his own opinion on storage management amidst the deafening buzz around virtualization. Software and hardware providers are rolling out new features to make the storage management process simpler, but his problem with all these new options is that there will still have to be a key individual focusing on managing it all. According to George, the only way a business wouldn't need a storage manager would be with the existence of intelligent and automated storage. Now the idea of storage intelligence and automation sounds appealing, 
but in the end, until we move into the era of artificial intelligence and flying cars, pure storage automation isn't happening. That being the case, all storage options will absolutely need some sort of storage manager to do maintenance and troubleshooting.
However, there is another option that will significantly reduce IT burdens while you wait for the future to come around; outsourcing data management using a hosted cloud based service. Instead of wasting your own resources on a storage manager, when you outsource email management to hosted provider all the data management is taken care of by a third party. You may feel that this is a violation of privacy, but all these companies (like Sonian) do is migrate your information into the archive and store it for you. After that you, and others authorized at your company, are the only ones who can access that data. No longer would you face the threat of data overloading your infrastructure or using valuable IT resources to continually address and manage your storage needs. All you would need is a liaison to become accustomed to an archive service and all of a sudden you stop wasting time with email storage pains.
My personal (biased) opinion: I think a hosted archiving solution is a lot more productive than driving yourself mad trying to manage the endless amounts of data, waiting and hoping someone rolls out an AI to take over your job. Besides, we've all seen the sci-fi movies, we don't need HAL 9000 putting us out of work.
There are two major data management issues that revolve around the dilemma of whether to archive everything, or nothing at all. Each side has apparent benefits and draw backs, but choosing each extreme will most likely end your organization in an unfortunate situation.
A lot of companies, that practice some sort of back up and indexing system, ultimately save everything - forever. While the better-safe-than-sorry approach may theoretically prevent losing critical information or saving information for HR investigations, the reality is that all this data is lost in a complex and overloaded index. So while IT professionals are struggling to keep up with the data, when the time actually comes to retrieve an email or an attachment, it could take weeks when you only have days.
On the other hand, some companies find themselves practicing "underground archiving." Underground archiving is most often caused by strict retention policies where emails are deleted or moved before the end user is done with it. In this situation, the company will delete or archive that email. However, because the user still wants ready access to the file, they create personal archives such as a PST file or other "makeshift" solution. These can cause a number of problems, from creating a serious burden on the email client, to privacy, ediscovery, and retrieval issues.
However, email archiving isn't a give and take scenario. In reality, archiving solutions can give the benefits of saving everything, while also giving ready access to emails in the archive through advancing eDiscovery solutions. Thanks to evolving technology and solutions like cloud-powered email archiving, the decision to archive doesn't have to be a difficult one.
Download the Free White Paper: Why Use Cloud-Powered Hosted Email Archiving, In it, you will find the answers to: Why you should archive your content? Why hosted archiving makes sense? and What are the key issues to consider in selecting a vendor?
In February of 2008, Congressman Darrell Issa was attempting to make the case that Lotus Notes was a dead email platform, and instead suggested that a more technologically sound way to archive would be to keep thousands of PST files. He stated "I wouldn't want to do business with somebody still using Lotus Notes or still using wooden wagon wheels." Needless to say, I couldn't disagree more, and not just because of Sonian's relationship with IBM and our support for Lotus Notes. I disagree because technology is constantly evolving, changing, and improving. The ways in which we can store, and subsequently search through, data has evolved in such a way that archiving PST files, as Congressman Issa suggests, is simply being naïve (or at least stubbornly inefficient). However, although it was these statements that brought Congressman Issa to my attention, it is not these statements that I am here to discuss.
Congressman Issa is back in the thick of White House IT operations, expressing concern over current Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin's correspondence with members of his former employer, Google. There is a host of speculations about liberal conspiracy, conservative paranoia, etc. but the real issue pointed out by Issa was the ability McLaughlin could have to hide his communications. Google could potentially be used as a tool to keep staff email out from under watchful eyes of the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act.
Now comes another tricky policy called the Hatch Act. In short, the Hatch Act requires government personnel to use outside forms of communications for unofficial business, or non-governmental business. So for McLaughlin, if he wants to communicate with his old colleagues at Google, he has to use a Gmail or some other platform separate from the presidential servers. Issa, in this situation, believes that those emails separate from the official servers should be open and accessible to everyone in order to expose any duplicity or deceit. On the other hand, email and Presidency expert, David Gewirtz believes that the Hatch Act should be overturned completely and have all communication run through presidential servers.
There lies the dilemma: should all White House personal have all of their communications monitored, private and official? Should all their communications be combined into one mail platform? Or should there be varying forms of privacy, even within what is arguably the most important government hub in the world?
Watch the webinar to learn about security issues surrounding your archive: What are the threats? And what is being done to stop them?
Download the Security of Email Archiving Webinar Now!
A recent USAToday poll asked the question "What's your digital data worth?" (meaning the estimated value of your computer content, including photos, music and files.)
It's telling that over 25% of respondents reported their data is "priceless."
It's also telling that more than 60% value their data more than $300.
Cloud-powered archiving is the most affordable way to protect your digital data, so everyone can act like their data is priceless with no down-side consequences.
Download the Free White Paper: Why Use Cloud-Powered Hosted Email Archiving, In it, you will find the answers to: Why you should archive your content? Why hosted archiving makes sense? and What are the key issues to consider in selecting a vendor?
Jason Hiner posted on his Sanity Check Blog this article The 10 biggest headaches of 2007 for CIOs and IT managers. 2 of the Top 10 IT concerns relate to themes near and dear to Sonian’s raison etre: Storage and Compliance.
8. Storage Creep
With an increasing body of data going direct to digital and larger multimedia streams being a more frequent part of the data load, storage needs are exploding for lots of organizations. Many of them have designed their data systems for scalability, but even those are being stressed much sooner than expected in many cases. The storage crunch will not abate any time soon. Beyond just throwing more resources at the problem, there is a sore need for better storage optimization solutions to handle all of the duplicate data on most networks.
5. Dealing with Compliance
From HIPAA to Sarbanes-Oxley to FERPA to PCI, compliance issues have engulfed many IT departments and have taken a big bite out of IT budgets because of the staff resources it takes deal with compliance. Many IT departments are struggling with how to integrate compliance activities into regular operations and/or get additional funding for compliance activities.
Contact Us to request a free Compliance Toolkit!