Is SharePoint the Next Big Thing in Archiving?
We all know that email archiving and file archiving are extremely important because of the storage cost savings, eDiscovery savings, and backup and recovery efficiencies they deliver. Email archiving came onto the scene in the 1990s as email became a very common communication mechanism, but really took off in the last 5 years due to compliance and eDiscovery concerns. File archiving is in the midst of taking off within the past year or two as organizations realize what a risk all of that unmanaged content poses from several perspectives – eDiscovery, data loss prevention, compliance, privacy, and security.
I have to wonder if SharePoint is the next hot archiving market (not that email and file archiving will go away). SharePoint adoption is viral – after all Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) provides a lot of great collaboration capabilities for workgroups and is free in the operating system. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is already a $1 billion product line for Microsoft - another sign of the widespread and rapid adoption of the system. But, with the realities of eDiscovery and a focus on risk reduction and costs savings (like storage management), I have to wonder if all these organizations that are deploying WSS and MOSS are also doing so with archiving in mind.
Would love to get your thoughts and comments on this as I think it’s a very imporant area, especially for organizations that want to be able to easily execute legal holds, streamline eDiscovery, and do things like early case assessment (ECA). Let us know what you think…thanks!
March 12th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Uhhh, no. At least I hope not.
I would be interested in seeing its adoption levels in the SMB… As a usable product, it is unfortunately somewhere between using French Toast to Fly to Paris.