Doing it right comes down to applying common sense to decisions about what should be archived and for how long, where and how archive data should be hosted so that it ful fills accessibility and re-reference requirements (as well as any special requirements specified in regulatory and legal mandates), how data will be moved from production IT platforms into the archival platform and how migration and management will be accomplished over time, and how end users will interact with the archive system (a factor that most directly determines the outcome of the overall archive strategy)." Comments from Archive Management.org

(http://www.archivemgt.org)

Making the Business Case for Data Archiving

It is a fact of modern business life that virtually no IT project will receive funding unless it has a full business value case to support it. Project advocates need to explain how the project will return its investment in terms and language that review committees or senior managers understand.

Typically, a full business value case has three elements: cost-savings, risk reduction and process improvement.

The good news is that a data archiving project has substantial potential value to offer in each of the three categories.

COST SAVINGS:

• Archiving can reduce costs by helping you to make the best use of the capacity that you already own.
• Cost-savings also accrue to the reduced load on heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in data centres

RISK REDUCTION:

• Investment risk: greatly reduced as good archiving systems have no forklift upgrade
• Legal risk:  Regulations and laws governing data management are on the rise. Archiving Mitigates the Risks
• Disaster and security risk:  The efficacy of a disaster recovery or business continuity plan is measured by the metric "Time to Data."

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

• Productivity: With intelligent archiving, you can expedite searches, reduce application load times, and add potentially hundreds of hours of wasted time each year back into productive work.
• Decision Support:  Once archived, historical data should be in a well indexed and highly searchable form.  This enables its speedy inclusion in decision support processes, such as historical analysis.
• Data Modelling:  Building an intelligent archive includes the creation of a data centric model of the business:  mapping data to business processes, tasks and workflow on the one hand and to tech infrastructure on the other.

More on the archiving process next issue........

If you would like any further info on the archiving ROI and Archiving process, send me an email or give me a call.

Alternatively I will be presenting the process at the IIM (Institute for Information Management) National Conference in Canberra on the 14-16 of August 2007 (http://online.iim.org.au/minigen/)

	LTO-3/4 Tape Libraries Cheap as Chips

-5U Rackmount Tape Library 36 Slots (400GB to 14TB)

-Direct Attach Fibre Channel LTO-3 Drives

-Includes Onsite Support (Australia Wide)

$16,599* ($133.80*/week over 36 month term)

-5U Rackmount Tape Library 36 Slots (800GB to 28TB)

-Direct Attach Fibre Channel LTO-4 Drives

-Includes Onsite Support (Australia Wide)

$18,599* ($149.91*/week over 36 month term)

LTO-4 features:

LTO-3/4 Tape Library Datasheet

	Nexsan Storage Systems Clean Up again at this years StorageAwards

Earlier this year Nexsan was awarded the following:

• SATABeast named SAN Solution of the Year by Storage Magazine UK - June 2007
  
  

• Assureon wins Compliance Product of the Year from Storage Magazine UK - June 2007
  
  
• SATABeast is named Editor's Choice and earns 6 out of 6 stars from IT Pro - January 2007
  
  
• Assureon Appliance is named New Product of the Year 2007 by Network Computing - April 2007
  
  
• Assureon is named Editor's Choice by IT Pro - January 2007

	University of Delaware selects XLS to Consolidate Outdated Backup Systems

“Consolidating several outdated backup systems into one XLS increased capacity, reduced floorspace, significantly cut power consumption and reduced administration costs at the University of Delaware's main computing center.”