Long standing backup and archive processes served IT departments well from mainframe days through the dotcom frenzy. As more information was created, backup windows began to shrink and IT needed to find new technologies to protect data from corruption or deletion. Because backup and archiving were never separated, IT departments did not realize that they were copying much of the same data. This lack of insight also hurt IT and legal departments that paid upwards of $3,000 a tape to have historical data restored in response to legal and regulatory inquiries.

By segregating the archive process from backup, IT does need to manage another procedure, which requires its own infrastructure and resources. However, the benefits of taking one large, laborious process and splitting it into two are too hard to ignore. By archiving information more diligently, IT can remove non-transactional data from production systems, reducing the amount of data to be regularly backed up. In addition, online archives can be indexed, making it much easier to search, locate and review information requested as part of an electronic discovery. IT can also retain business records online for compliance purposes, while also making this information accessible by others to use for trending, reporting and other analytics that were impossible when archived data was stored offline and often offsite. As a result of these benefits, ESG expects that organizations will archive over 60,000 petabytes of e-mails, files and database transactions over the next 5 years.

This paper examines how separating backup from archiving can make data protection more efficient, keep information online and accessible at lower costs for longer periods of time and achieve regulatory compliance.