Imagine you were running a company at the daybreak of digital age, or in case you actually did run one, it shouldn’t be hard for you to remember what an archive stuffed to the last shelf with hard-copy folders meant to you. It was the treasure-house of your team’s achievements and a written record of your entire business venture that you couldn’t afford to lose.
Today, most of the paperwork is gone. It is already a widespread fact that 75% of any company’s intellectual property is located within its emails and other arteries of online communication, such as social media. All it takes to undo the history is a single act of sloppy information management, or a human error, which can cause the digital paper trail to disappear for good.
But virtual material is susceptible to retention. Instead of using the outdated backup methods, you can perform a data archiving, as the most efficient retention scheme. And it isn’t just for the keeping data. As you probably know, communication archiving is obligatory in all industries, since legal authorities have recognized the significance of companies’ and organizations’ virtual recordkeeping. All over the world, business people are bound to retain their online communication data for a given period of time, and provide it in case of eDiscovery or litigation, unaltered, in prescribed file types and as fast as possible. Those who fail to comply with these regulations pay millions of dollars in fines.
Companies therefore struggle to find the most efficient and compliant way to archive their communication. But even though the legal argument is more than persuasive, you shouldn’t do it only because you’re obliged to. Even if it weren’t so, there would still be many reasons why every decision maker should sweat over trying to structure their unstructured data.
In your search for the best way of archiving and managing your intellectual property, there are five facts you should always bear in mind.
1) An ideal solution should be able to retain the data, while simultaneously organizing it. Today, the information/data that may eventually be needed is stored in different online platforms, such as social media, instant messaging chat logs, web searches etc. To find a needed piece of information, it is not enough to do a simple search. You need to cross-search, to thoroughly examine all of your employees’ or your own activities at a given moment. Could you possibly remember all the interactions you had on March 31, 2014? The emails you sent or received on that day can be easily retrieved. But, as it happens, a vital piece may be missing in this puzzle. Maybe a forgotten Facebook message, which you could use as a proof in a litigation case. If lost, this case may affect your reputation. And if auditors knocked on your door, this lost information would cost you serious money, because in the eyes of law, social media today have the same status as email conversations.
2) Better regulate than speculate the future. After your ideal solution has done processing and archiving the data, you will want to customize the process, so it could continue to do so with your minimum intervention. Unless, of course, you need to dig something up.
3) Context speaks volumes. The ideal archiving solution should be able to read and index it. The information of who, when and to whom wrote or sent something should be at your disposal, as well as what they wrote or sent. Metadata (data describing other data) can help us understand, compare or sort the collected information.
4) Where should be the server that stores ALL of your confidential information? In your workroom, of course. Let’s suppose you’ve decided upon cloud archiving. An alarm should turn on immediately in your head, glowing the word REMOTE, because this actually means your data is stored at a distant area. You don’t know where the servers are, nor would it make it easier if you knew. They admittedly are powerful. So is a giant safe that protects your treasure, but you don’t know where it is or who could gain access to it.
5) Servers have souls. And limited capacity. A good archiving solution won’t let you clutter them. The space saving advantage is perhaps the most sought-after. Not only should your archiving machine be able to find and merge duplicates, but it should also compress files. By indexing attachment text, old attachments will be removed and replaced with links, thus also helping you save some space.
All of these concerns can be answered by Jatheon Comprehensive Solution. First of all, it can store, organize and centralize all of your scattered data along with metadata in a unique repository, in a compliant form, enabling you to easily search through it, and find what you’re looking for in seconds. All of your further communications will also be captured and monitored in real time.
Not only does Jatheon tailor the solution to the specific needs of your industry – it also helps you customize the way in which the future materials will be collected and stored. Companywide automation of this process is a valuable option which will help you prevent human errors in handling and retaining data. Imagine the workload this would take off your IT personnel’s backs, not to mention the pressure of responsibility.
Fret not about the safety of your valuables either. A great advantage that Jatheon Solution has over cloud archiving is that it contains the server type hardware device, paired with the appropriate software installed on your computer. All your data is safe, literally in your room and easily controllable by you. You don’t have to worry who will get their hands on it.
Last, but not least – finding the best data archiving solution isn’t just about precaution or liability. It is also about becoming fully aware and competent to manage and interpret the history of your enterprise, collecting useful information that would otherwise get lost in the digital labyrinth. History seeks interpretation, it doesn’t just serve the law. It means getting to see your business from a diachronic perspective – to look at who you were, from where you are standing now.
