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3 reasons more organizations are archiving their data

28th October 2020 Print

Data archiving is not a new notion. In fact, in the simplest sense, it’s a direct descendant of traditional records management practices – organizations have always had timelines for keeping information on hand, but when that information was stored on paper, at least some of it had to be tossed on a regular basis. With the shift to digital record keeping, however, it’s possible for organizations to just keep expanding their storage capacity to keep everything. Why, then, are more organizations moving to data archiving?

Archiving data serves organizations in a number of ways, and not just by cutting back on storage demands. From cost savings to compliance and security issues, organizations and businesses across industries have discovered that moving from on-hand data to storage to platform-neutral archiving is a transformative proposition.

Key To Cost Cutting

To say that it’s possible to keep every record that an organization generates is a sort of dishonest hypothetical. Yes, it’s possible, but it would be impractical, risky, and – most of all – expensive. One of the most significant gains that organizations have seen from adopting data archiving practices is financial savings. How much they save varies widely based on scale, industry, and other factors, but one estimate suggests that businesses could save between $195 and $2,028 per terabyte per year by archiving data, compared to keeping that same data in active storage and backing it up in case of system failure.

Security Management

Another reason that many organizations are developing data archiving plans has to do with security and compliance issues. Cyberattacks are on the rise and because active data is often stored in the cloud and has many points of contact with different systems – this is what makes it usable – that data is vulnerable. 

Industries like healthcare, which has been subject to a growing number of attacks in recent years and which is held to stringent privacy regulations, have been particularly quick to realize the importance of this system. To that end, healthcare organizations emphasize archiving legacy data since systems that are no longer being updated and maintained are most at risk of a breach. However, any industry concerned about cybersecurity threats, especially new attacks like ransomware, should consider the benefits of data archiving.

An Availability Issue

If we want a technical process to be widespread, then there needs to be an easily accessible and affordable solution on the market. Until that happens, organizations will avoid adoption, if only because they don’t want to build a solution in-house. That’s why, while many groups do choose to house their archives on secure internal servers, the practice’s increased popularity is largely linked to increased availability of archive as a service platforms

Archives as a service have made the practice more accessible in a number of ways. In particular, these platforms tackle the technical elements of data archiving, such as ensuring all information is still functional when made platform-neutral and that metadata is imported. They also generally manage these tasks at a lower price point than organizations would pay to build their own archiving systems, and without the labor and cost of building these capacities internally.

Data archiving is well-positioned to become a standard part of organizational management over the next several years, just as cloud storage for day-to-day operations has become the norm over the last decade. Right now is a period of adjustment, as the necessary tools become mainstream and organizations recognize the benefits, but the transition won’t last long and the data archiving industry should prepare for an unprecedented influx of new clients.