Enterprise Archiving: Which Deployment Option is Right for Your Organization?

Bossier City, La. (PRWEB) April 29, 2014

Choosing the right archiving deployment method to best address your company's business needs can be a difficult process. There are a variety of deployment options available in the market today-- each with its own advantages. Determining which one is right for you is critical because it can make or break your ability to access your valuable corporate information how and when you want to.

As you select an archiving solution, it’s important to know that the majority of archiving vendors offer only one deployment method, and a small number offer two or more. ArcMail Technology, Inc., a leading provider of simple, secure and cost-effective enterprise archiving solutions, is the only vendor to offer a full spectrum of deployment options, making it easy for organizations to transition to new approaches or use multiple approaches at the same time.

If you’re in the market for a new archiving solution, the deployment methods most often used today include appliances (hardware), software and hosted solutions. Because infrastructure strategies evolve over time, and yesterday’s preferred deployment method may not be tomorrow’s, it’s important to take a look at each method to determine their individual benefits.

•     Appliance/Hardware

    Hardware-based archiving platforms have been around for a number of years and they offer     organizations reliability and complete ownership of the data. A good hardware platform should     allow users the ability to index, archive and instantly access business-critical data – from social     media, to hosted or server-based email and attachments, to other traditional forms of electronic communications. And while appliance-based solutions might have a higher initial cost, the total cost of ownership (TCO) over three to five years tends to be lower than other methods. The typical downside to an appliance solution is that it represents one more piece of hardware     that has to be housed in the datacenter and managed and maintained by your IT staff.

•     Software

    Just like an archiving appliance, archiving software should allow users the ability to easily store, manage and quickly retrieve multiple types of business-critical data. But all software is not made the same and learning all you can before purchasing is critical. Find out if the software is easy to deploy and use, if it is enterprise-class or designed for smaller organizations, and if good     technical support is readily available. Also, verify how well it works with other systems you may     have, from storage and email, to virtualized servers and more. Lastly, find out if the provider has     a proven reputation and experience in archiving. Some software companies are here today and     gone tomorrow. Another consideration with software models is the associated services that are     required for implementation. These usually show up in the form of project and consulting fees     that can be two to three times the cost of the software alone.

•     Hosted

    With the variety and volume of data continuing to increase at an exponential rate today, archiving     has become more complex. As a result, many companies are moving to hosted archiving, which means their archiving solution along with their archived data are hosted by a third-party and stored at on off-site location or in the cloud. Hosted solutions can decrease IT costs by removing the need for purchasing, managing and maintaining an archiving appliance as well as any     additional storage and servers you may need to support it. From an IT perspective, moving your     data off-site or to the cloud simplifies your approach to archiving and can add a measure of     scalability as well. For further cost benefits, hosted solutions typically allow you to archive on a     “pay as you go” plan. But it’s important to ensure that your provider will maintain your data over     time and make it available should you need it five or even 10 years out. Having ownership of     your data – no matter where it is stored -- is therefore a top concern with hosted solutions.

New Hybrid Archiving Deployment Methods Emerge

What if you want the reliability and TCO of a hardware platform but could also use the extra scalability and cost savings of hosted archiving? Then ArcMail’s Cloud/Storage Hybrid Archiving offering might be the ideal choice for you. It’s the only solution of its kind to combine all the advantages of the appliance/hardware, software and hosted methods. Integrated with an on-premise hardware appliance from ArcMail, it is a first-in-class archiving product that gives the customer the ability to store their archived data anywhere they want: the data can be pushed to an on-site data center, a remote data center or the cloud. For cloud, customers can align with the cloud storage partner of their choice. Featuring blazing fast data retrieval, the Cloud/Storage Hybrid Archiving solution lets you access all your archived content, on any subject and from any date range, in seconds.

Regardless of which deployment method you select to satisfy your company’s archiving needs, one thing to continue to keep in mind is flexibility. ArcMail is the only archiving vendor to eliminate the need to change archiving platforms each time you change your infrastructure strategy. With ArcMail’s multiple deployment capabilities, you can seamlessly shift archiving platforms to support evolving infrastructure strategy changes. And because all of ArcMail’s archiving solutions are built from the ground up by ArcMail, customers need to deal only with ArcMail’s archiving experts – and no third-party vendors – whenever advice or support is needed as this transition takes place.

For more information on ArcMail’s complete line of archiving solutions, visit http://www.arcmail.com.

Follow ArcMail on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About ArcMail Technology

ArcMail is a world-class, trusted provider of scalable solutions that address multiple business issues through best-in-class archiving technologies and services. For more information on ArcMail, visit http://www.arcmail.com or call 318-841-1151.