Send It Out: The Resurgence Of Storage As A Service

If an in-house compliance archive is out of reach, consider outsourcing.

Howard Marks, Network Computing Blogger

February 21, 2008

2 Min Read
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It used to be that IT groups resisted using external services for their compliance archives, concerned that putting valuable data in someone else's hands would heighten the risk of exposure, loss, and availability lapses. Today's online archive providers, including big players EDS, EMC, IBM Global Services, Network Appliance, and Sun Microsystems, have gone to great lengths to address these fears by hosting their archive infrastructures in state-of-the-art data centers with redundant power and Internet providers. The investment has paid off: In 2006, the worldwide storage service market was worth about $25 billion, according to Gartner; it should grow to $33 billion by 2010. InformationWeek Reports

Our take: When you must retrieve data fast--and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure now require that parties to a lawsuit produce evidence much more quickly than in the past--having access to a staff that lives and breathes archiving day in and day out is worth its weight in subpoenas. Applications that generate revenue, or help desk calls, get in-house admins' attention first.

To get started with storage as a service, consider e-mail. Because Exchange provides a journal interface for archiving, and e-mail has well-defined metadata in the header that can be used to set retention policies, a variety of providers have gotten into the act. Companies can implement online e-mail archiving with little to no capital expense in just a few days. In comparison, installing a fixed content storage system and integrating it with e-mail archiving software is a substantial project. This makes online archiving especially attractive to smaller organizations. Zantaz's First Archive on Demand service leverages its EAS e-mail archiving system to provide an online service, while MessageOne and Mimecast take a slightly different approach, building integrated e-mail management services that provide continuity and message management for Exchange as well as an archive.

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About the Author

Howard Marks

Network Computing Blogger

Howard Marks is founder and chief scientist at Deepstorage LLC, a storage consultancy and independent test lab based in Santa Fe, N.M. and concentrating on storage and data center networking. In more than 25 years of consulting, Marks has designed and implemented storage systems, networks, management systems and Internet strategies at organizations including American Express, J.P. Morgan, Borden Foods, U.S. Tobacco, BBDO Worldwide, Foxwoods Resort Casino and the State University of New York at Purchase. The testing at DeepStorage Labs is informed by that real world experience.

He has been a frequent contributor to Network Computing and InformationWeek since 1999 and a speaker at industry conferences including Comnet, PC Expo, Interop and Microsoft's TechEd since 1990. He is the author of Networking Windows and co-author of Windows NT Unleashed (Sams).

He is co-host, with Ray Lucchesi of the monthly Greybeards on Storage podcast where the voices of experience discuss the latest issues in the storage world with industry leaders.  You can find the podcast at: http://www.deepstorage.net/NEW/GBoS

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