Inquiry Spotlight: Archiving, Q4 2008

Forrester clients report that data storage is doubling every 12 to 18 months. Not only is data growth exploding, but companies also need to figure out how to retain this data for regulatory compliance or legal discovery purposes. As a result, more and more infrastructure and operations professionals are evaluating archiving offerings and services to alleviate the pain. Unfortunately, archiving is complicated, with many different factors to consider and dozens of different hardware, software, and service combinations. Between January and September 2008, Forrester answered 106 end user inquiries on archiving, including questions on eDiscovery, retention, message archiving, and using archiving to cope with the data growth explosion. The high volume of inquiries on archiving demonstrates that many companies wrestle with defining their archiving policies, building the business case for specialized offerings, and selecting and implementing either the right archiving software and hardware or the right online service.