It doesn’t matter what the industry—healthcare, financial, legal, manufacturing, etc.—when a knowledge worker's ability to access data and files is hampered, he or she can’t work efficiently, their co-workers suffer, productivity declines, and the business is negatively impacted.

The truth of the matter is that the amount of content creation in corporations is growing by leaps and bounds. By 2009, Gartner estimates there will be 35 million terabytes of corporate data, 50 percent of which will be unstructured in formats like PowerPoint or Adobe Acrobat. The other 50 percent will be structured in formats like e-mail and databases.

Why not relieve the individual knowledge worker from the responsibility of knowing where the files are located? File system archiving solutions, such as Symantec’s Enterprise Vault, help organizations ensure data is available to knowledge workers when they need it. Enterprise Vault acts as an information warehouse for corporate and personal data, which can then be mined as a knowledge resource using built-in index and search technologies.

One of the largest general contacting firms in the United States, with headquarters in San Mateo, Calif. and contracts totaling over $2.4 billion, was faced with the problem of employees having difficulty locating important information, such as architectural drawings, charts, and schematic diagrams. The information was often hidden away in individuals’ PST files and e-mail attachments that were unsearchable using Exchange tools.

The company addressed this problem, and other data management issues, using Enterprise Vault. Today, knowledge management is greatly improved as policy-driven project archives have replaced years of content stored in employees PST files.

“Businesses have a tremendous amount of data and files sitting on network shares that are old, duplicates, and haven’t been accessed in years. Not only is managing this data a huge burden but it’s also costly and makes finding data and files difficult for the individual knowledge worker,” says Danny Milrad, senior manager, product marketing for Enterprise Vault.

Losing Control
IT has a problem. The amount of data and files piling up on the corporate network is making it increasingly difficult for employees to search and retrieve data. To make matters worse, workers add to this burden when they accidentally delete a file and call the help desk to help restore it. The process is timely and costly.

There’s no getting around the need for desktop computers, laptops, or servers hosting e-mail systems and a growing number of enterprise applications. Users require fast access to data and files whether the information is sitting on a local hard drive, in the data center, or at a remote facility. In fact, companies depend on it.

It’s no surprise that more companies are realizing that they’re losing the battle when it comes to data management. Throwing storage at the problem is not the answer. Devising a short-term and a long-term strategy for data management is the answer.

As a growing market, file system archiving is gaining attention among savvy IT executives. Archiving takes copies of primary data that are no longer needed on a daily or short-term basis and moves that data to another location, ideally less expensive storage, where it is archived for the long term.

According to IDC, the archive and hierarchical storage management (HSM) market posted 32 percent growth from Q2 2005 through Q2 2006.

By removing old or duplicate data from primary storage, companies not only improve backup, but they also restore performance. “Users don’t care where the data that they need is sitting, they just know it should be available when they need it,” says Milrad.

Enterprise Vault provides a flexible archiving framework to enable the discovery of content held within e-mail, file system, and collaborative environments. The software solution manages content via automated, policy-controlled archiving to online stores for active retention and seamless retrieval of information.

Make It Manageable
While more companies are seeking to protect data with data back-up solutions, the challenge of data management doesn't stop there. File system archiving not only reduces the amount of stored content on more expensive, primary storage systems but also provides facilities to index and classify data.

A digital archive provides a central repository for files that may have been scattered across multiple storage system. Additionally, a digital archive with search capabilities provides faster access to relevant files, including those created by different applications. This combination of features enables the knowledge worker to work efficiently, improving the workflow across the entire organization.

In an organization where Enterprise Vault for file system archiving is deployed, data is moved from the primary file server, based on archive policy, and to online storage for retention and retrieval.

The solution’s repository is also designed to reduce the amount of storage via compression and single instancing technology. So, for example, rather than have 1,000 employees each saving a copy of a corporate PowerPoint presentation, Enterprise Vault makes one copy and creates 1,000 links.

Additionally, files removed from the primary storage server are secured to ensure future accessibility regardless of application by rendering an HTML copy of all archived content. This self-serve recovery capability allows users to recover data quickly and resume productivity. Self-service also saves the business time and money by eliminating the need to open a help desk ticket.

The decision to deploy a file system archive solution is a simple. Do nothing and watch inappropriate user consumption and inefficient use of expensive storage capacity impede corporate productivity. Or, deploy a file system archive solution that maximizes the enterprise storage infrastructure, reduces IT cost and complexity, and improves operational efficiency.