Why archiving is a good idea

Archiving can have several bases. You may like to archive, as a museum or library does. Or records are filed because they have to be, because you are the government or because you have to keep documents for a certain period of time. So archive because you want to, or because you have to.

Always advantageous!

Whatever your motivation, it always costs money. If you want to archive, the willingness to pull out the wallet is somewhat greater than in the case of should. But you can also enjoy the benefits in the case of having to archive. If you file properly, you can find all kinds of things. What is a particular customer’s order history and what did they pay at the time? Of those things. Data is a valuable resource.

Do it right

The next question then is: how do you store it properly? It only gets expensive if you don’t store it properly. If you let mail sit in your exchange server or leave documents you don’t use much on fast, expensive storage, it takes up unnecessary space. Each time it is backed up and migrated again with new hardware. All unnecessary costs. But if you place your static data in an archive, you are using slower but cheaper storage. Your primary, expensive storage becomes smaller and cheaper and requires less maintenance. That’s double profit, and the savings usually exceed the cost of the archive.

Archive your email!

To return to e-mail archiving for a moment: that is becoming more and more topical. Many mailboxes bulge and take up a lot of space. On top of that, governments will be required to retain data from emails. So you have to file that properly. The storage capacity of a mail server is not that large, but it requires a powerful processor. Overflowing mailboxes slow down the system, so by investing in archiving for mail, you save not only on expensive, primary storage but also on power from your processor.