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14 Oct 2011DATABASES: Database Archiving Simplified
Recent Gauteng Business News
This situation has led to numerous issues. These range from poor application performance to high costs associated with managing applications that should be retired but can't be, simply because no one knows what to do with the data, says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting. Despite the constant projections for increasing data growth in every facet of business, organisations can do more than resign themselves to more storage, more application instances and more IT personnel - database archiving is a good start to solving this business challenge.
Data Archiving Can Vastly Improve Your Business
For organisations that elect to go this route, the improvements in application performance and reduction in storage capacity that can be achieved can be significant, as the common business problems of exponential data growth and the concurrent storage growth will be reduced. Application performance and backup times will also improve dramatically, adds Naidoo.
Database archiving should be considered as part of a broader strategy. Businesses are increasingly focusing on information governance as an area for improvement, including the management of information for compliance and risk mitigation purposes. Companies will continue to need access to older data (including legacy system data) for financial reporting, audits and conformance to regulatory requirements, and the only way to get data under control for these purposes is to implement intelligent application and data classification, retention, and management, which are offered as core components of archiving, he explains.
According to Gartner, companies can obtain all of these advantages by looking to database archiving vendors that offer packaged and custom application support, rather than attempting to develop in-house solutions. Recent research by the analyst house found that the products provided by these vendors deliver great results through cost-effective out-of-the-box solutions.
Where to Get These Data Archiving Products
Solix Technologies, represented locally by Logikal Consulting, provides products of this nature, including the worlds first application retirement appliance. In situations where data from a legacy or redundant application must be maintained, usually for compliance purposes, but the application itself is no longer being used; or where the application may have outlived its original purpose, or may have been replaced by a more modern application, application retirement is needed. However, Naidoo points out that companies have been reluctant to retire older applications because there is the common perception that, without the original application, data will not be available.
Today's archiving products can address the need to keep data without the need for the original infrastructure. The Solix ExAPPS appliance is a cost-effective solution for organisations looking for simple and repeatable application retirement, and is a simple plug-and-play solution that supports the ability to extract data (or any subset of data) and store it in flat files that can be managed and accessed long term.
With most businesses having numerous applications spread across many platforms, the value of decommissioning outdated ones quickly becomes evident. However, application retirements go beyond just the hardware and software costs, says Naidoo. Maintaining and managing the infrastructures needed to support legacy applications takes time and resources. The same can be said of databases in most companies. Using a product created for the purpose of solving these problems and helping with data archiving makes business sense, and provides a tried and tested solution.
Business News Sector Tags: Management| Infotech|
