More than just customer service and compliance

This is according to June Julyan, product manager for data archiving specialists Mobius Management Solutions at Bateleur Software. Bateleur is the main local distributor for the Mobius products.

"With the right archiving solution, processes can be automated and reports can be processed more accurately and easily – this highlights the importance of storage supporting business processes."

But the advantages of data storage in terms of customer service can also not be overlooked, adds Mobius` David Webster, visiting South Africa recently from the United Kingdom.

"Companies are always trying to differentiate themselves with better service," he points out. Julyan adds that it is important for a company to keep all its information on a particular customer in one place - that holy grail of a "single view of the customer".

DATA DELUGE

Mobius lists Standard Bank, the SABC, Mutual & Federal and Spoornet as its flagship South African customers; and Webster picks up on a common theme running through Mobius` experience with all the large customers: that of SAP enterprise resource planning systems generating a lot of information - putting pressure on databases. "In the quest to be more efficient with ERPs, companies are creating more and more data," he tells iWeek.

It is impractical to keep all this data in the businesses databases, he says, adding that there must be an offload of data into the archiving systems.

"The maintenance of systems can become unwieldy - data must be taken out of the databases and archived."

MAKING MIGRATION EASY

The growth in structured data, throughout all enterprises worldwide, is expected to grow at 40% per annum, for the foreseeable few years, according to a recent Gartner survey, notes Julyan.

However, the growth in unstructured data is predicted to rise at a dramatic 1 600% each year - which significantly raises the profile of data archiving and storage solutions, and begs the question: will you be crushed under your own information overload, or will you use that information to benefit the business?

The actual hardware medium is always changing, adds Julyan, "no storage technology lasts for more than five years or so - so it`s important to choose a technology that allows you to move from one medium to another without incurring heavy migration costs," she says.

There has been a trend in the local market over the past few years that has seen companies moving away from tapes and optical disks, to hard disks - since the cost of this type of storage is coming down.

SMART STORAGE

Webster believes that South African companies are aware of the need for a proper archiving solution - especially the country`s larger corporates. Since Mobius generally deals with larger enterprises, his appraisal of the SME scene is limited - but he says it is important for businesses of all sizes to keep accurate records of all digital information. It is a sentiment shared by Iron Mountain Digital`s Amit Parbhucharan, who comments that companies of all sizes are "constantly creating and accumulating more information on PCs - more than ever before".

According to analyst group IDC, he adds, more than 60% of an organisaton`s unstructured data resides unprotected on users` local hard drives. "The loss of this kind of information - especially at executive level - can be very damaging and counter-productive," adds Parbhucharan.

Compliance with archiving regulations, as well as with other information-holding regulations like FICA (banking) and RICA (cellular operators) presents a huge challenge to organisations, says Webster.