This article discusses using IT organizations to implement a file archiving strategy and repository choice is the key foundational piece to the strategy.

My next-door neighbor has a two-car garage and a large shed in the backyard. In the over twenty years we have lived next door, they have yet to park a single car in their garage. The garage is overflowing with all manner of yard equipment, winter tires, retired exercise equipment, and the odd piece of furniture. The shed is also packed. They own a snowblower, yet I often lend them ours because they can’t access their own. Unfortunately, many organizations handle file management in a similar fashion to my neighbor.

Most corporate file shares are overflowing with files long ago abandoned. Most peg the amount of ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial) files to be at least 80% of the total under management. A good number of these were obsolete days after being created; over 95% within 90 days. Finding specific files, or finding files containing certain information becomes complex, as they tend to be spread out in various islands of storage. Some are on personal devices, some exist in on-prem file shares, while others are in Google Drive, Dropbox, or personal OneDrives.

Lack of control has led to a huge cost drain. Gartner estimated that the average cost to manage 1 TB of primary storage was $3,351 annually. That number does not capture the cost of backups, data replication, or other technologies. The vast majority, 79% of managers and professionals in an EMC survey, listed storage management as a major pain point. Yet file archiving (really most information lifecycle management) gets little attention within corporate IT and, understandably, no attention by business users. After all, they assume IT is “handling it.”

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