Subject: 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey Report

For release: 06 Aug 2007

SNIA Releases 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey Report

Archive practitioners confirm long-term information retention crisis

San Francisco, Calif. (August 6, 2007) "Digital information is at risk
of being lost." That is the warning from 276 long-term archive
practitioners who participated in the Storage Networking Industry
Association's (SNIA's) 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey Report. The
recently released report by the SNIA's Data Management Forum and its 100
Year Archive Task Force captures the operating practices, requirements
and issues facing organizations managing large amounts of information.
This information can be managed for extended periods of time spanning
from 10 years to "forever,"

and the study aims to provide a better understanding of market
requirements so that the task force can frame a definition of best
practices and technology solutions.

"Driven by compliance, security and legal risk, organizations of all
types are experiencing extraordinary challenges related to the long-term
retention of digital information in today's data center," said Vincent
Franceschini, Chairman of the Board of the SNIA. "This ground breaking
study identifies requirements from the practitioner's point of view and
confirms that this pending crisis must be addressed by developing
standards and best practices consistent with the operating practice we
call Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). 

Key survey findings presented in the report include the following:

* Long-term digital information retention needs are real: 80 percent

of respondents have information they must keep over 50 years, and 68
percent of respondents said they must keep this data more than 100
years.

* Long-term generally means greater than 10 to 15 years a period

beyond which multiple physical media and logical format migrations must
take place. Only 30 percent declared they were migrating information at
regular intervals.

* Database information was considered to be most at risk of loss.

* Over 40 percent of respondents are keeping e-mail records over 10

years.

* 70 percent of respondents say they are 'highly dissatisfied' with

their ability to read their retained information in 50 years. 

Overall, those surveyed felt that current practices are too manual,
prone to error, costly and lack adequate coordination across the
organization. In addition, information classification and collaboration
between those who own information and administrating groups were both
recognized as very important practices that can be implemented now. 

One survey respondent illustrates the challenge before us this way,
"When using a digital archive understand you will have a long hard
expensive road to keep the records. You have to think about the ability
of your great, great, great, great ... grandchildren being able to read
and logically interpret what your history was."

John Webster, Principal IT Advisor at Illuminata, Inc. commented, "We
rarely if ever think of saving our digitized thoughts for the sake of
posterity.

But for the sake of historians, law makers, sociologists, and scientists
yet to be born, we should. Otherwise, future historians may look back at
this time in history as the digital dark ages."

Respondents from the RIM, Archivist, IT, Security, Legal and Business
communities of 276 organizations participated by sharing their opinions,
challenges and operational needs related to long-term digital
information retention. The market requirements identified in the survey
can be summarized into four categories. These requirements will guide
the work of the SNIA's Data Management Forum moving forward:

1. Accommodate the critical business drivers behind long-term

retention. 

2. Overcome the barriers of cost and complexity that are inhibiting

adoption of best practices.

3. Address the information practitioner's needs by providing better

management tools, best-practices, job visibility and education.

4. Solve the technology challenges of logical and physical migration,

scalability, classification and the incorporation of metadata into
archival repositories.

For more information and to view the 100 Year Archive Requirements
survey, visit www.snia-dmf.org/100year
<outbind://30/www.snia-dmf.org/100year>
<http://www.snia-dmf.org/100year/ <http://www.snia-dmf.org/100year/> > .

About the SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit
global organization, made up of more than 460 member companies and close
to 7,000 active individuals spanning virtually the entire storage
industry.

SNIA members share the common goal of advancing the adoption of storage
networks as complete and trusted solutions. To this end, the SNIA is
uniquely committed to delivering standards, education and services that
will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market.
For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org
<outbind://30/www.snia.org>  <http://www.snia.org/
<http://www.snia.org/> > .

About the SNIA Data Management Forum

The SNIA Data Management Forum is a cooperative initiative of IT
professionals, vendors, integrators, and service providers working
together to conduct market education, develop best practices and promote
standardization activities that help organizations become
Information-Centric enterprises. Areas of focus include the technologies
and services that support information lifecycle management, data
protection, information security, and long-term digital information
retention and preservation. For more information, visit www.snia-dmf.org
<outbind://30/www.snia-dmf.org>  <http://www.snia-dmf.org/
<http://www.snia-dmf.org/> > .


To UNSUBSCRIBE, change options, or subscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-rol.html
(If using Netscape, must have version 6.1 or higher to view the above page)