
Now I'm not the biggest pack rat around but I do have both emails and business documents stored on my computers that are over 25 years old. Recently, I have started to scan most of all of my paper documents. Shreeding the non-essential originals to reduce clutter, increase portability, increase my search capabilities, and safeguard from theft and loss.
Understandably, I am just one person but when you take this on a corporate scale where the problems increase exponentially. Imagine receiving in excess of 40,000 daily emails, managing hundereds of employees with 100's of documents, or taking at least one backup of a small databases (5-10TB is small now) every day. How would you manage not only the physical storage but also the indexing, retrieval, and safeguarding of data?
Today, as part of a response to this issue, IBM announced it just opened a center in Guadalajara, Mexic for just such issues. Their goal is to aid and assist businesses get a handle on their ever growing need to archive massive amounts of information. With the ability for simulating a business's current needs to store different types of information (documents, email, video, audio, etc.), IBM will bring together subject matter experts and help in the planning, management, and archival process of massive amounts of business information.
You can read the full story and obtain some contact information at: IBM opens center dedicated to helping clients manage and archive business information