Legacy Data - Risk and Opportunity

Legacy data stored on backup tapes or other media such as optical disks, has traditionally represented the greatest source of risk and costs for organizations involved in litigation or regulatory investigations. Not only is it typically difficult to access, in many cases organizations have no clear picture of the contents of their backup tapes or the resources to process them effectively.

Not surprisingly, legacy data is also a critical source of institutional IP and may play an indispensable role in disaster recovery situations.

These various factors need to be balanced out in any effective approach to managing these data assets. Here is a series of steps, that NDC can assist you with, designed to build a sound foundation to managing legacy data assets:

• The first step to a proper approach is to create an effective map of the universe of legacy tape backup contents by cataloging and indexing them. Utilizing the industry's most advanced technologies, NDC offers content level indexing of backup tapes on a scale and at a cost to finally make this feasible enterprise-wide.
  

• Subsequently, various strategies can be undertaken to consolidate this data and prepare it for litigation or compliance purposes. One of the more straightforward and productive steps, short of loading the data sets into an on-line archive, such as an email archive, is to simply consolidate the data using state of the art de-duplication, single instance storage and the newest media and compression technologies.
  
  Together with the previously created catalog, this consolidated set offers a highly compact, accessible and searchable data collection that can dramatically lower the costs, and associated risks, of litigation related electronic discovery or regulatory investigations.
  
  
• The final step represents the holy Grail of such efforts and that is to ingest the legacy data into an on-line repository, such as an email archive or a records management solution. NDC can assist with this, whenever this solution is selected, by utilizing our industry-leading capabilities and resources.
  

Pro-active cataloging and consolidation of legacy data sets offers the added benefit of effectively preparing the data universe for future ingestion into any on-line repository, should one be contemplated. The ingestion can then be accomlished  in a timely and cost effective manner. Typically, some 75-90% of the task will have already been completed at a far reduced cost, given the more rational time frames and various cost controls available with extended time frames.

However, many organizations have difficulty comfortably selecting such final solutions given the current, highly fragmented solutions marketplace and the various uncertainties associated with its future directions. The NDC approach allows an organization to take incremental, proactive steps, in a controlled and cost effective manner, and bypass the various risks associated with a final solutions selection. At the same time, this approach offers significant and immediate benefits in terms of lowering risk exposure and any potential costs of electronic discovery.