Data Retention and Compliance Problems: ArchivePlus is the Solution

Industry analysts have continually stressed on the need for data retention in enterprise databases. The size of the databases is estimated to be growing at the rate of 125% annually. On an average, about 80% of the data in various enterprise databases is estimated to be redundant or not used for real-time purposes, which makes it ready for database archiving purposes.

The current rate of data growth has been astounding and the latest compliance measures cited by the government have made it mandatory for all organizations to retain much of their company data for inspection. These regulations were mostly proposed and enacted by the government in the light of several recent corporate accounting scandals. These laws state the procedures and rules to be implemented by various organizations for handling their business-critical data. The US government actually wants the companies to retain their corporate information for a specific period, especially for some years. Out of all the regulations, the most critical and important part happens to be periods specified for data retention.

According to an analyst firm, based in Milford, Massachusetts, named Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., the archive capacity in the private sector alone will hit a staggering 27,000 petabytes by 2010. Even analysts at ByteandSwitch.com maintain that it is difficult to manage backup and data recovery as the volume of data is doubling every year, forcing enterprises to eke out extra cash to load additional hardware and database software licenses.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA and BASEL II are some of the laws and regulations related to data retention. It has been estimated that there are over 150 federal and state laws which elaborate extensively on the subject of data retention in the US. Today, the retention period is basically determined by the government itself. The data retention period which ranged from five to seven years are now crossing the barriers of 20 to 70 years.

Database Archiving is a 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.

ArchivePlus is a comprehensive database archive & purge solution created by Indusa Technical Corp. to boost enterprise database performance in a variety of ways. The database archiving solution is said to be built to address the most critical problems encountered due to data growth. Additionally, it solves the endless list of compliance requirements with its archiving and purging technology by promoting more retention of data.

ArchivePlus successfully helps in transferring redundant data from live production databases to database archives. With the process of the data conversion to XML format, ArchivePlus helps in maintaining the integrity and accessibility of information in those archives. For more details of the same, log on to www.archive-plus.com and www.indusa.com.

Benefits Offered by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) has a plethora of benefits for the corporate world. Some of them are:

• Consistent User Experience
MOSS can be easily integrated with everyday applications made by Microsoft, e-mail facilities, and effective web browsers to provide a satisfying experience for corporate staff. It also simplifies the interaction of people with business data because of its robust out-of-the-box functionality.

• Increase in productivity
The workflows for commencing a task, searching, and reporting are unique in itself in the business context through MOSS services. Most of the tasks can be done without coding and can be integrated with the regular email application.

• Meeting of Compliance Requirements
Users can custom set the security settings, policies of data retention, accounting policies, and data expiration for transactional records of business to manage sensitive business information effectively. The litigation risk for one’s organization becomes minimal as the employees will be aware of the regulations and due to SharePoint’s easy integration with Microsoft Office.

• Effective Management of Content
Management of multilingual content is simplified with the help of document templates which are there in the library. One can strike and maintain relationship between the original version of the document and its different versions.

• Simple and Easy Access to Business Data across Disparate Systems
Users can create personalized views and interact with different business systems through web browser by configuring back end applications. MOSS collects different documents present in an organization in one central repository which is easy to access by different roles assigned to authenticated users.

• Helps Connect People of Similar Expertise and Relevant people only
Enterprise Search feature of MOSS 2007 adds corporate data with exhaustive details of documents, people in an organization and roles.

• Shared Business Processes Beyond Company Boundaries
The user can use smart e-form driven solutions to collect business data which is critical and important from different types of people: customers, employees, suppliers and the like through a Web browser.

Microsoft Office SharePoint services also boasts of features like duplicate collapsing, spelling correction, and alerts which enhances the quality and relevance of search results. Additionally, through MOSS services one can share only one central version of any document thus protecting any critical information which might be embedded in the document.