The writing is on the wall.

Best practices in corporate governance increasingly focus on the need and challenges of taking charge of corporate electronic data assets. As difficult as this may be for easily accessible online content, it becomes only more challenging for legacy data sets typically stored on backup tapes and optical disks.

The technology solutions world is full of confusing chatter and complex but incomplete solutions. Talk of RIM, ILM, KM, BPM, IRM etc. etc. reflects the lack of clarity and reliable standards that can form a foundation for effective decision making.

Many organization, convinced of the fundamental need to take charge of their electronic records hesitate on embarking on this journey due to the lack of clearly defined steady targets, the substantial costs and risks involved and the potential for organizational disruptions.

NDC Solution
NDC offers simple base services that are target neutral and therefore can be engaged without committing to or invoking the costs and risks associated with the end solutions. The benefits of this approach are substantial and simple to define and realize.

A key component of taking charge of legacy data stores stored on backup tapes is to first catalog and index them. This creates a base foundation for effective decision making regarding further steps. In most organizations such a catalog, in itself, would represent a step forward on the journey to taking charge of these assets, since, in many cases these organizations have lost effective organizational knowledge of the contents of older legacy backup sets. Even with newer backups, they may be dispersed across multiple silos and no single consolidated view is available.

However, this is only the first of he available steps. Once an effective catalog is created, informed decisions can be made regarding the need for and extent of further steps. Among the available options is to de-duplicate and consolidate into single instance storage the universe or subsets of the tapes. This results in easily manageable and fully cataloged collections on the most current, state of the art, high density media. Not only does this offer potential for 100 to 1 consolidation, lowered storage costs, enhanced longetivity and ease of access but it can substantially lower the costs and time for discovery in litigation and regulatory investigations.

As a final step, the data streams can be normalized and loaded (ingested) into email archives or other repositories for true on-line access.

When executed without regulatory or litigation pressures and added costs. NDC services can be surprisingly costs effective.