by Don Mulroy

Compliance and other business drivers are forcing companies to save data for much longer periods than required years ago. This requirement can very often be for years, and in some cases decades. Some of these regulations such as the Healthcare Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, require that this information be located and retrieved very quickly. Compounded over many quarters and years, the total amount of data that needs to be archived can be staggering.

Traditional methods of archiving, such as saving backup tapes or share drives, don’t cut it. Likewise, saving everything on primary storage is much too expensive. Furthermore, simply recovering files is often the easy part, since the data is often locked up in older proprietary application formats. What’s a storage professional to do?

Perhaps it’s time to think about a Document Management System.  Traditional Document Management Systems are very good at storing Microsoft Office documents that are viewed often where functions like check in – check out and version control are very important. Perhaps Microsoft Sharepoint can be effective for these same functions on a departmental level. However, when regulatory compliance demands the retention of content for an extended number of years, and demands retention of many and complex content types, isn’t a long term archive like a better option?

The right Document Management System offers a powerful, centralized management of document images, reports, customer correspondence, statements and more. The vendor should have deep experience in highly regulated markets—like financial services and healthcare—in order to gives you a trusted solution that supports your regulatory compliance initiatives.

Using powerful compression technology for effective storage, a Document Management System manages content in its native format. Once in the system, content can be managed throughout its lifecycle. You also want a policy-driven Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM), for rules-based lifecycle management. The system should automatically define where content is written, when and where it migrates, and when it needs to be digitally shredded. Lastly, you want flexibility by supporting optical, tape and magnetic storage media allowing regulatory compliance and storage at the lowest possible cost.

Documents and content volumes are only going to grow.  Isn’t it time you thought about long term, strategic approaches to managing this ever-expanding amount of data?

– Don
@datawatch