The entries in this Active Archive blog are filled with good ideas about how organizations benefit from the implementation of a secure and robust long term information archive. The concepts are intuitive - and the benefits seem obvious, but it also seems clear the growth of active archiving as a generally deployed data storage practice is going to take time. The question is "How much time?".
Some people argue that standardization of tape formats is an important ingredient in helping to drive more widespread use of active archiving. Others will argue that the dramatic reduction in the costs of storage devices will be the key. And either one of these elements may play a role in growing the overall market, but let's be honest about the fact that the data format that is used to house data on tape will represent about 1% of the factors involved in the success or failure of your active archive initiative. Interestingly, I think that the single largest factor that can accelerate the growth in use of active archiving is something you might not expect. It's "people" and their willingness and ability to lead the way to success.
I'll be honest that the growth of active archiving is undoubtedly occurring. At our company, we work with clients every day who are evolving their concept of how storage can work to meet their business requirements. For these people, the "light bulb goes on" in their heads when they realize that the decision to pursue active archiving is really a decision to put a living storage infrastructure in place that they can mold and adapt over time to meet their really long term storage needs in areas that include cost optimization, retrieval performance, retention, version management, multi-platform access - and active data validation and repair to deal with the reality that some of their media will experience failures over time.
As we work with clients who are considering active archive, a key question we ask is "how long do you need to keep the data"? More often than not the answer is "forever..." - and that's a long time. Human nature teaches us that before people move forward on things that will need to be in place "forever" - they typically want to be sure that they are making that right decision and getting aligned with the right people. It just makes sense.
We recently were partnered with an integrator and customer who expressed their desire for having a 'single throat to choke' in terms of support for their solution which was going to leverage active archive software to manage both tape and disk-based storage in a high-availability and high-capacity solution. While they used the term 'one throat to choke', it was clear that they really wanted a strong 'hand to help' as they designed, implemented and optimized their solution for the long haul. With active archiving, it's just as important to have the system working well on "Day 10,000" after deployment as it was to have it working well on "Day 1".
In the case mentioned here, we stepped up to offer our commitment to be the 'one stop shop' for ongoing support on the overall solution - but in other cases it's been the integrator who desires to be the long term partner and advisor in support of the system. The point is not really about 'who' took on the advisor and support role - but rather that it was a required piece of the puzzle for this customer to move forward.
The growth of active archiving overall relies on our ability as leading vendors and integrators to simply be "leaders". We need to be ready to step up and risk being the "one throat to choke" in order to seize the significant rewards that will come from helping thousands and thousands of organizations transform the way they achieve secure long term storage of their critical electronic data.
Great products and data formats alone won’t be enough – it will all come down to the people.
So what's really new about the idea of an Active Archive? For those of you who still use tape in your storage environment – and we know you're out there – haven't you been backing up information to tape for years?
Most organizations already store current business information on disk and less frequently accessed information someplace on tape. It's the innocent comment "stored someplace on tape" that motivates my Active Archive discussion.
As it turns out, most organizations and businesses are now powered by information. Access to the right information at the right time empowers people to make better decisions and be more effective. And being able to access the right information requires having access to ALL information so you can easily locate the things that are important to you at the moment you need them.
Let's face it – traditional backups are painful and don't promote using the information they contain. While it's easy enough to back up information to tape, it's cumbersome to retrieve the backup copy. In many cases, retrieving backup data means begging IT to locate and restore the tapes that contain the backed up content to a location where you can retrieve the information. In essence, you need IT to "do you a favor" so that you can obtain the information you need. Consequently you only approach IT as an act of desperation (when you've lost an important file) versus an act of desire (when you think archive information might help support an important business decision).
If you think about it, storing and accessing backup data is very much like the storage issues you face in your own life. Everyone has too much stuff at home. And while some of the stuff may be old or infrequently used, it's still valuable, and you might need it down the road. When your 2-car garage gets full, you may rent self-storage space to accommodate the overflow. However, renting a self-storage unit has many of the same problems attributed to storing information:
Well, here's the good news. Active Archive can instantly turn your two-car garage into a six-car garage – with all that fancy white cabinetry and organizers that are advertised in magazines. Think about it. You could store your golf clubs and other frequently used items in cabinets near the garage door (i.e., on disk) where you can access them quickly on demand. Conversely, you could store less frequently used items such as your camping equipment and the vase from Aunt Sally in cabinets located further down the row (i.e., on tape) where you can retrieve them in just a few more seconds but just as easily as you accessed your golf clubs.
When your garage is an Active Archive:
While Active Archive can't fix the mess in your garage, it can likely play a vital role in shaping how you manage the ever-growing volume of enterprise information your company generates every day. Think about how much simpler life would be if you had online access to ALL of your information ALL the time. Want to know how to make that happen? Take a look at Active Archive.
Now, for those of you who have eliminated tape and are doing disk-to-disk backup only, do not think you are immune to this same problem. But that's a subject for my next blog.
