Launch of Archive Management.org signals new phase of regulatory compliance, "Green" IT operations
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/24/2007 9:06:00 AM
Electronic data archiving has become a "must-have" information management strategy for public and private organizations. Regulatory compliance nd e-discovery requirements are a significant driver of data archiving in companies worldwide, especially those that must develop policies to retain, delete, protect and ensure the privacy of certain data to meet legal mandates. Additionally, archiving is an essential part of "green" data center initiatives that are focused on reducing the utility power requirements of information technology going forward.
To aid organizations in the development of common-sense archiving strategies, the Data Management Institute and Toigo Partners International have launched Archive Management.Org (AMO), a free information portal and on-line community that connects technology consumers to user case studies, background information and test reports on archive-related products, and contacts for service providers who can help specify and deploy archive solutions. The free site will also offer visitors the opportunity to report on their experience with products and services to enable oversight of those selling archive products and services.
AMO, while accepting vendor and service provider sponsorship, is vendor-neutral. "The need for neutrality," according to Jon Toigo, Managing Principal of IT consumer advocate, Toigo Partners International, and Chairman and Founder of the Data Management Institute, "is one of our reasons for launching AMO. There is far too much infighting in the market between vendors competing for this business, as well as a tendency to provide hype rather than useful information in vendor marketing materials."
Too many consumers are getting confused about what archiving actually is and what needs to be included in an archiving solution, Toigo says. AMO will help contextualize archive for its business value, as well as looking at basic and advanced architectures and strategies that have proven successful for fellow consumers.
AMO sponsors will be announced shortly. Says Toigo, "Many, many solution developers, resellers, consultants and integrators have expressed interest in sponsoring AMO when the idea was first introduced at the partner conference of archive platform maker, QStar Technologies, last month in Sorrento, Italy. It was just as important to these folks to get good information out to consumers about archiving techniques and platforms as it was to sell their own gear and services. They were also concerned that the archive industry, which numbers hundreds of optical, tape and disk-based solution providers, was not responding effectively to poor architectural models for archive being advanced by a few large vendors with large marketing budgets."
"AMO is a sanity check," Toigo says, "and an opportunity for consumers and vendors to come together to define their requirements and build appropriate solutions."
Archive Management.Org officially launches this week. It joins other highly-trafficked information portals developed by the Data Management Institute and Toigo Partners, including Disaster Recovery Planning.org and Storage Management.org.
