Plasmon Business Archive Management

Contents

Chaotic Business Archive Management

Reactive Business Archive Management

Sustaining Business Archive Management

Proactive Business Archive Management

Value-add Business Archive Management

 

Overview 

Every company takes a slightly different approach to implementing a long-term archiving infrastructure. Although there is a common set of practices that best-of-breed organizations tend to follow, these processes are not widely known, and are elusive in nature. Plasmon has defined a set of best practices, referred to as Business Archive Management, which will help you develop and improve your archiving processes.

Business Archive Management is focused on safeguarding your critical information assets, supporting efficient and effective corporate governance, and helping you create business value. It consists of a comprehensive set of business processes that are supported by technology. And by implementing these “best practices,” you can more effectively link business strategy with IT actions.

Why is Business Archive Management important?

Effective Business Archive Management is critical for organizations today. It helps reduce business and legal risks, lower costs through storage optimization, and create incremental business value.

• Improved corporate governance reduces risks: There are thousands of regulations impacting how business information must be stored, accessed, and maintained. Failure to comply can result in significant fines and/or harsh regulatory sanctions. Organizations can minimize risks by implementing strong business processes for archiving that are linked to larger corporate governance requirements.
• Efficient use of corporate assets lowers costs: Double-digit data growth and longer retention requirements are fundamentally changing the way information assets are managed and archived. It is no longer practical or cost-effective to keep fixed content on primary storage devices. A strong archiving business process optimizes storage resources and improves access to information.
• Reusing archived information creates incremental business value: Most companies today are searching for ways to increase revenue, decrease costs, and improve customer relationships. And growth often involves reusing archived data. For example, entertainment companies have created new revenue streams by reselling archived motion picture footage.

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Chaotic Business Archive Management

Archive requirements manage you

Chaotic organizations are best described as having no approach to implementing Business Archive Management processes, policies, or technologies. These organizations do not manage their archive requirements and simply do not have archives. When information needs to be retained, it is most likely backed up on tape cartridges.

Key attributes of Chaotic organizations

• No formal approach to archiving
• Tape backup serves as the archive
• Unable to comply with regulations or corporate governance guidelines
• E-discovery is painful and time consuming, if not impossible
• Primary storage is growing out of control with static data

Chaotic Business Archive Management is not sustainable

Simply put, Chaotic Business Archive Management does not work. Since compliance guidelines often go unheeded, your company may be at significant business and legal risk. The IT department is at the mercy of both external and internal information requests. Every time a request is made, significant time and money is expended trying to locate the correct file or e-mail. In most cases, the requested information has either not been kept or cannot be found.

At the same time, storage costs are most likely rising as more information is retained on primary storage, and backed up on a daily or weekly basis. The chaotic cycle tends to repeat itself over and over, as your organization continues to waste resources and effort, while increasing its level of risk.

Benefits of moving to Reactive Business Archive Management

Given the precarious nature of this Chaotic stage, it is highly advantageous for all organizations to advance to the Reactive stage of Business Archive Management. The benefits of making this transition include the following:

• Improved ability to manage archive requirements
• Lower storage costs as archive data is moved from primary storage to cost-effective, long-term permanent storage
• Reduced business and legal risks

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Reactive Business Archive Management

Managing chaos

Reactive organizations are beginning to implement basic Business Archive Management processes and policies. Targeted areas such as e-mail or PACS may have their own dedicated archiving systems. However, most information assets are not considered as archival objects and are still stored on backup tapes.

Key attributes of Reactive organizations

• Archived information resides in independent silos, e.g., e-mail, files, medical images
• Tape backup still serves as the archive for a majority of information
• Regulatory compliance is possible, but requires significant manual effort
• Archiving is given little attention until a specific request arises
• Fire drills are common for discovery requests
• Discovery across multiple archive domains may be possible, but is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive

Reactive Business Archive Management works but is inefficient, risky, and costly

From a bare bones perspective, Reactive Business Archive Management can work. Basic business archive requirements are being managed and you have a limited ability to satisfy information requests. However, since the archives are usually maintained in silos, storage resources are used very inefficiently. And since Reactive organizations have very little coordination between their IT and business groups, there are still significant corporate governance concerns.

Benefits of moving to Sustaining Business Archive Management

It is highly advantageous for all organizations to advance to the Sustaining stage of Business Archive Management. The benefits of making this transition include the following:

• Ability to comply with most, if not all, government regulations and corporate governance requirements
• Reduced business and legal risks
• Less manual effort to manage archives lowers costs and frees up the IT staff for other tasks
• Lower storage costs as archived data is moved from primary storage to cost-effective, long-term permanent storage

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Sustaining Business Archive Management

Gaining control over the archive process

Sustaining organizations understand that constantly reacting to seemingly uncontrolled archive requirements and requests is inherently risky and expensive. As a result, they start implementing formal processes to gather archive requirements and identify specific information assets for archiving. Business and IT managers collaborate among each other, and archiving processes begin to integrate with the business.

Business Archive Management in Sustaining companies supports the majority of corporate governance concerns and promotes efficient use of storage resources. And the benefits of reusing archived information start becoming apparent.

Key attributes of Sustaining organizations

• Defined archives exist for most domains subject to compliance
• General business objectives such as corporate governance and implementing “green” technologies are important components of the archiving process
• Archiving processes comply with most regulations and e-discovery is enabled
• Primary storage is optimized by keeping archive data on less expensive storage devices
• Discovery across domains is possible and automated
• Silos of archived information start becoming integrated/federated
• Archives can be sustained over time and survive multiple technology upgrades

Sustaining Business Archive Management is the fork in the road

At a minimum, companies should strive to reach the Sustaining stage of Business Archive Management. Corporate governance requirements are being met effectively and efficiently. Once your archives are minimizing risk and sustaining the business, it is important to evaluate whether it is financially and strategically beneficial to continue the evolutionary process. For some companies in some industries, the decision to advance to the Proactive stage will be easy. And other non-regulated and non-information centric businesses may find that further investments do not provide adequate returns.

Benefits of moving to Proactive Business Archive Management

The benefits of advancing to the Proactive stage include the following:

• Greater ability to reuse your information assets to generate incremental business value
• Complete cost optimization for your archived information including archive applications and processes
• Improved access to information results from the consolidation/federation of archives

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Proactive Business Archive Management

Optimizing archives for business use

Proactive organizations are shifting their archiving priorities from corporate governance and cost savings to creating incremental business value. Archived information is routinely used to enhance customer relationships, develop new products, and/or improve operational efficiency.

Key attributes of Proactive organizations

• Business requirements drive archive composition
• Defined archives exist for all information identified as having business value
• Ability to comply with all compliance and corporate governance regulations
• Archiving processes meet business objectives such as reusing information and enabling “green” technology
• Archive silos become consolidated and/or fully federated
• Archives have sustained several generations of technology changes
• Storage infrastructure is fully optimized regarding cost and performance criteria

Proactive Archive Business Management adds business value

Proactive Business Archive Management is fundamentally different from Sustaining Business Archive Management. Sustaining organizations are primarily focused on minimizing the loss of business value by complying with regulations, and optimizing the storage infrastructure. Proactive organizations have already established the necessary archiving processes to minimize business and legal risks, and are seeking to create value by effectively reusing archived information. 

As part of this process, investment decisions are no longer justified exclusively on reducing risk. Creating new revenue streams, increasing customer loyalty, leveraging corporate cost structures, and providing environmentally responsible alternatives become important investment criteria.

Benefits of moving to Value-add Business Archive Management

Only a handful of companies in the world may decide to upgrade their Business Archive Management processes to the Value-add stage. If your organization decides to take this step, you will experience the following benefits:

• An information asset management process that is completely linked to your business objectives and goals
• Complete cost optimization for your archived information including archive applications and processes
• Maximum incremental business value generated from the reuse of information assets
• Higher levels of business innovation

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Value-add Business Archive Management

Optimizing business objectives

Value-add is the most mature stage of Business Archive Management. Companies in this category are best-in-class examples of how archiving processes should be developed, implemented, and maintained. It is anticipated that only a limited number of organizations will ever have the business requirements and skills necessary to reach this stage.

Key attributes of Value-add organizations

• Business Archive Management is recognized as an important element of the company’s competitive advantage
• Archive composition is completely driven by clear business requirements
• Archiving requirements are fully integrated into the company’s strategic planning process
• Archives and archiving processes are totally integrated across the enterprise
• Business applications are fully “archive-aware” and use Business Archive Management as a common service
• Archives are fully consolidated/federated

How Value-add Business Archive Management creates value

Value-add companies create business value by lowering costs via storage optimization, providing access to archived information so it can be easily used to create new opportunities and revenue streams, and enabling conservation of our natural resources. While few organizations will ever fully attain Value-add status, the attributes provide the best-in-class references and standards for the Business Archive Management Maturity Model.

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For more information on Plasmon Optical Libraries and Archival Solutions contact the NAS sales team on 0870 752 6250 or complete and submit your contact details on the form provided under Contact Us