Data Bloat and Database Archiving

Though the current database archiving market is very small, with a small set of companies catering to database archiving like IBM Optim, Applimation's Informia, and Indusa Technical Corp's ArchivePlus, the future prospects are bright enough. Most of the demand is attributed to rising e-discovery costs, regulatory compliance clauses, and overall enterprise storage optimization needs.

Some analysts also view an opportunity for database vendors to tie up with database archiving solution providers to deal with data explosion which is bursting the seams of enterprise storage systems. According to Enterprise Strategy Group estimates, the number of primary databases is escalating at the rate of 25% annually, with a subsequent boost to secondary databases as well.

Further, IT managers and CIOs in many companies lament that the average retention period for data is very high. According to a survey, the approximate average retention period for records in a database is roughly 6-10 years. Most of the information which is required for e-discovery purposes is rarely accessed and non-transactional database information. Analysts say that soon organizations will realize the risks of creating too many copies of data and will utilize database archiving as a much viable approach to follow.

Large enterprises today are neck-deep with information flooded from all directions in their respective storage mediums. Unused data is continually eating up resources, and gobbling up the organization's profits. Megabytes gave way to gigabytes, gigabytes have acceded to terabytes, and in the near future, terabytes is sure to escalate to petabytes. The data is growing relentlessly with organizations waking up to the reality of data explosion. The latest data retention clauses for pharmaceutical companies are at least 20 years while nuclear facilities will have to hoard data for 50 years. Database archiving solutions help in reducing costs, retaining data, and also aids in complying with regulation procedures.

In the face of exploding data filling up servers in the world over, information lifecycle management has become complicated to be implemented efficiently. Database archiving software helps in managing data effectively; releasing data is rarely used or redundant to other cost-effective storage mediums. Data retention compliance issues are also resolved through such an approach.

Database Archiving solutions are widely used process of plucking out selected records from operational databases which are not to be used quite often. The archived data is then stored in a non-erasable format like XML files where they can be searched and retrieved if needed.