Archiving misunderstood and poorly executed.

The process of archiving is being abandoned in the face of mountains of data and pressure to deliver business continuity capabilities, survey results reveal today. Some users may even be confusing archiving with backup, figures suggest. Archiving is by no means done universally: 28 per cent do not archive data. Of those that do archives 67 per cent use manual processes, with only 25 per cent having some kind of automated approach and the remainder a hybrid technique.

Despite the fact that 72 per cent of people claim to archives 54 per cent of respondents still declare that at least 20 per cent of their server-based storage comprises unstructured user data, with 15 per cent of the respondents suggesting a figure in excess of 50 per cent. Sixty six per cent of respondents report that on average at least 20 per cent of their primary storage is email--including pre-archived material such as Microsoft Outlook's past archive files.

Comment:

"Given these figures, you have to question the effectiveness of the archiving techniques in use, where they are in use," said BridgeHead Software, which commissioned the survey. "It's inconceivable that such a volume of email and other one-off files need to stay on primary storage to the extent that it occupies such a high proportion of space.' The extent to which archiving is failing or is not being done at all is underlined by the fact that 15 per cent of respondents don't know how long it would take them to retrieve a lost file. 'This suggests that some people are confusing backup and archiving, "Archiving involves indexing content such that it can be retrieved easily at a later time using a keyword search. Anything else is just backup, and ineffectual backup at that.' Two per cent of respondents admit that they didn't think they'd ever be able to retrieve a lost file. The confusion is further reinforced by the revelation that business continuity and disaster recovery head the list of drivers for archiving, at 48 per cent. However, there appears to be some appetite for getting to grips with archiving. Areas of interest cited for the coming twelve months include email archiving (49 per cent) and file archiving (43 per cent), which hold their own alongside disaster recovery (54 per cent) and backup (48 per cent)--although the similarities in the figures could also be due to the lack of distinction that appears to be made between these various services.

Tape remains--for the time being--king of archive media. Seventy three per cent of respondents employ tape-based media although, at 48 per cent, disk must be closing the gap rapidly. WORM media is reported by 22 per cent of respondents. Thirty three per cent of respondents report more than I TB of archived data, with 4 per cent claiming more than 15 TB. Despite these results, still sixty three per cent of those surveyed would claim to have a file archive software solution, 56 per cent an email archive software solution. It is clear that what the industry would describe as an adequate archiving system and what is generally implemented are two very different things.