New developments in business analytics, data governance initiatives, security, and enterprise document management have put added pressure on IT teams to manage archived and/or historical data. Whether it’s for deriving insight, regulatory compliance or audit, or other workflows, organizations are finding new reasons to use old data, and the increased need to access it can be challenging.

According to Gartner Cool Vendor in the multi-cloud data management space Aparavi®, the key to maximizing secondary – and future – utility of archived data is to ensure open, direct access separate and distinct from the archiving application. Open access ensures data remains an asset available for secondary usage, not just for retrieval or recovery.

Backup and archive platforms have traditionally used proprietary data formats as a means to offer more robust features such as security and performance. These benefits come at a cost of reduced accessibility, particularly if users no longer own the software used to store the data initially, and once data is managed by a backup or archive application it is no longer accessible to other applications.

Government regulations that require retention for many years and sometimes indefinitely, and more recent regulations that require destruction of personal data upon request, similarly require access. Users must be able to search and retrieve the archived data based on content, whether that is with an enterprise search tool or a manual process. Retrieving data independent of the original application that archived it and realizing the value of the data for secondary usage requires access to the archives to be open, controlled, and managed. To maximize secondary usage, archived documents should be classifiable, searchable, and easily retrievable upon request.

As organizations implement active insight solutions, business analytics, machine learning, and other data centric solutions, all data, not only on-premises data, becomes relevant. To get the most value out of these tools, archive data, wherever it resides including possibly multiple clouds, must be included. Direct access to the archived data becomes even more important when organizations make efforts to prune and reduce primary storage capacity.

“Business archives today are vast, millions or billions of files, and not only need to be accessible forever for recovery and privacy-management purposes, they contain a treasure trove of historical data that could be re-used to stay ahead of the competition or provide better services to customers,” said Victoria Grey, CMO, Aparavi. “The key is archives must be completely open, thereby enabling any user and any application to access their data indefinitely and without constraint.”

Users of Aparavi Active Archive℠ can interact directly with archived data via an open API, even if it is archived to a service such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft Azure, or Wasabi. This open access design allows organizations to archive unstructured data to their cloud vendor yet maintain secure and managed access to their archived data when they want it, without using Aparavi’s web user interface.

Aparavi Active Archive is an intelligent multi-cloud data management solution designed specifically for unstructured data. Aparavi indexes, classifies, retains, and archives unstructured data either on-premises or in any cloud. Cloud freedom, combined with Aparavi's technology to reduce data up to 75 percent, delivers huge cost savings, agility, and independence. Data is stored in an open-source, published Open Data Format to guard against vendor lock-in and ensure data access forever. Data classification and tagging, along with full-content search, provides fine-grained control and enables regulatory and internal compliance. The SaaS model allows fast integration along with best total cost of ownership.

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About Aparavi

Aparavi helps trail-blazing IT leaders master the growing volume of unstructured data with a multi-cloud, intelligent, and open data management platform. SaaS-based Aparavi Active Archive unlocks the value of data today in order to prepare for the uncertainty of tomorrow. For more information visit http://www.aparavi.com.