New functionality of data archiving platforms and new methods of consumption, including cloud-based services are driving companies to migrate their archives to new platforms or into hosted environments.

However, migrations can severely impact on business functions until they are complete and it can take months to migrate large volumes of data, but companies can use guaranteed archive-to-archive migration services to ensure that day-to-day business functions are not interrupted and they can access all data during a migration, says Soarsoft Africa MD Chris Hathaway.

“An effectively managed migration can help create structure and control of unstructured data and enable electronic discovery functions to find information, which is also necessary to ensure that relevant data is protected.”

The need to comply with internal corporate policies and regulations is also driving companies to migrate so that they can leverage functionality, such as identifying personal information, including credit card and identity numbers, to comply with legislation.

“Rationalisation of information during a migration involves deleting redundant data that can potentially expose risk, is expensive to maintain and migrate and holds no value for the organisation,” says Hathaway.

A critical element of a migration is to ensure a chain of custody for all data and access to all data during the migration. Each record that Soarsoft migrates is individually tracked and logged with an identity number. Soarsoft can show the full transition path of each record and that the data is an electronic original, he notes.

Further, companies aiming to use a cloud or hosted service must keep in mind that the data must still be migrated across to the service provider’s infrastructure, which can be time consuming “over the wire”. When significant volumes of data are involved with foreign-based services, such as Microsoft Office 365, this can require dedicated links from local data centres.

In some cases, regulations around data sovereignty may apply and, in these cases, it will be a requirement that, to consume a service in the cloud, a local copy of the information be available at all times. For example, a customer may consume a service, such as Office 365, for its messaging function, but use a local archive solution to maintain a record of all current and future data, says Hathaway.

“These hybrid models are becoming increasingly common to fit the specific requirements of individual customers who may even have different users on different platforms that need to co-exist during the migration and also in the foreseeable future,” he highlights.

Soarsoft is also migrating a significant number of smaller businesses’ archives, as the services previously available to larger enterprise platforms are now affordable for these smaller businesses. Even small businesses can have significant amounts of stored data, if they have been active for several years, and this information is often critical to these entities.

“A migration is an opportunity to rationalise and put structure into unstructured data by securing it and leveraging the discovery and retention facilities that newer platforms can offer.”