Secure Storage and Archival for your Organization

Companies are handling increasing amounts of digital data with every passing year. According to the IDG Data and Analytics Survey, an enterprise company handles an average of 350 TB of data. That’s over 350,000 GB of data.

Data storage costs have also been on the rise, even with improvements in technology that give us more storage per dollar. This is partially due to the mass migration of data into the cloud, but it is also heavily impacted by the data that companies process and retain. The 2021 “Distributed Storage Market” report from Fortune Business Insights states that by 2027, this market will grow to $297 billion, up from $49 billion in 2021.

Data is a Valuable Asset

All these costs stem from one simple truth: data leads to insights. The more data, the greater or more accurate the insights.

Businesses rely on collecting as much data as they can to improve goods and services and better position themselves in rapidly changing markets. Furthermore, businesses are feeding data into cutting-edge tools like analytics algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It all comes down to having the best knowledge possible to develop market resilience and dividend growth.

Not all data is going to be highly relevant to the day-to-day or even month-to-month operations of a company. The criticality or usefulness of data typically erodes with age. Yet, in spite of this erosion, it is often necessary to retain data as a means of understanding the company’s past development and why certain decisions were made. Aged data may also need to be retained to meet internal or external regulatory requirements. For instance, HIPAA requires that certain protected health information (PHI) be retained for a period of five years before it is destroyed.

What To Do With All That Data

Since companies are invested in maintaining data, they need somewhere to put it. This is where long-term archival or cold storage comes into play. This type of storage is meant specifically for low-touch data that is not needed for regular business operations. This data is kept in case it is needed in the future or to meet record-keeping requirements. Similarly, cold storage refers to storage used for “cold data” or low-touch data that is rarely accessed.

To conserve resources, cold or archival storage is often kept on the same infrastructure as backups. This infrastructure may be a cheaper storage option with lower performance rates, but this performance reduction has almost no impact on business performance explicitly because this data is not routinely accessed. It’s an ideal allocation of resources according to business need when it comes to data storage solutions.

FileCloud: The Content Collaboration Platform for all Your Data Needs

FileCloud is a powerful enterprise solution to long-term data archival. For clients that need maximum control over their data, FileCloud Server enables data to be hosted on-premise, behind your corporate firewalls. FileCloud Online is a solution for clients that prefer to have their data hosted for them, rather than maintain their own infrastructure. You can also integrate your FileCloud platform with public cloud services, such as AWS and Azure.

For those who want the best of both worlds, FileCloud ServerSync provides access both to local servers as well as cloud storage. This solution could also be deployed explicitly to manage and archive data, with local servers reserved for cold storage and cloud storage designated for high-touch files that can be accessed anywhere through any device.

Within the FileCloud system (Server, Online, or ServerSync), default and custom metadata options provide maximum control over labeling uploaded files with the appropriate classification. FileCloud’s Smart Classification system handles classification automatically and effortlessly.

Once files are classified, retention policies can then take effect. FileCloud offers five types of hierarchical retention policies that automatically protect files from being moved, altered, or deleted. These include:

• Admin Hold – Prevents any update or delete of digital content for an indefinite period of time; can only be removed by an administrator
• Legal Hold – Freezes digital content to aid discovery or legal challenges; can only be removed once the policy expiration date is reached.
• Archival – Identifies digital content to be kept around for an unlimited amount of time before being deleted or released.
• Retention – Moves organizational content into long-term storage and prevents deletion until an expiration date is reached.
• Trash Retention – Can be configured to automatically delete files in Trash bins or to expire with no action.

No more worrying over content management and long-term data archival – FileCloud’s management tools, including retention policies and Smart Classification, can help automate the appropriate retention and deletion of data. In doing so, you can have confidence that you’re only storing the data you need, which means you can save money on data storage costs in the long term.