Contoural Services - Data Archiving Design and Deployment Services

Archiving services enable organizations to manage their electronic records over time, to ensure cost-effective storage and retrieval capabilities that meet compliance requirements and business needs. Archiving solution design and deployment services cover all types of electronic documents and application data, from structured databases and email to unstructured file systems -- as well as process documentation and knowledge transfer.

Service Objective
Identify archiving targets, design an archiving architecture that fits the organization’s needs and resources, and facilitate deployment of an effective archiving solution.

Example Deliverables

Data analysis and archiving target selection for major data types:
- E-mail and instant messaging
- Structured data and enterprise database applications
- Unstructured data / file servers
Technical requirements analysis
Strawman archiving solution design
RFI/RFP definition and project management with vendors and staff
Vendor comparison summary and recommendation
Deployment plan and budget
Pilot implementation & testing plan
Detailed deployment plan

Benefits of Contoural Project Approach

Reduces risks of data loss and non-compliance, by moving static data and inactive records to archival storage
Increases application service levels by removing inactive data from production systems
Reduces the need for server additions and upgrades
Lowers storage costs by selecting appropriate archiving systems and storage tiers for inactive data

Business Drivers: Why Move Static Data?
Most records and data become less active over time, and the volume of static data keeps increasing. Application performance falls, backup and recovery take longer, batch jobs can’t complete, and IT organizations find themselves buying more servers and storage.

This is especially painful when the static data is mixed in with active data on the same high-performance storage tier -- and then protected with frequent backups and remote replication.

By moving static data out of the active data sets, and placing it on a lower-cost storage tier, enterprises can significantly improve service levels and greatly reduce their storage costs.

Once the initial data classification is complete, and application data groups are placed on appropriate storage tiers, the next logical step is to look more closely at each major application.

Where are the opportunities to improve performance and lower costs? And who has the skills, tools and time to target those opportunities, define the technical requirements and drive an archiving project from design to deployment?

Approach: Application-Aware Archiving
The simplest archiving approaches use file-system metadata to select and move complete files. However, these methods provide little value for e-mail messaging and database applications, where old and new records reside inside the same file.

Even for unstructured data, such as office documents in a file system, some methods and technologies are more effective than others.

Contoural offers Data Archiving Design and Deployment services that help companies improve application service levels and reduce costs, by migrating static data out of active data sets and into lower-cost archival storage.

These services are structured as discrete projects that offer immediate value, such as helping clients understand the requirements and opportunities for archiving specific applications and data types. Or facilitating the architecture, design, vendor selection and deployment of an effective archiving solution for an impacted application.

Data Sheet
The Data Archiving Design and Deployment Services data sheet provides a more detailed description of the typical project phases and deliverables.

Contoural application archiving consultants are involved in a variety of development and deployment activities, including software installation, testing, customization, and performance tuning. They have advanced functional knowledge of areas such as Oracle Application financials, order management, manufacturing or HR/payroll, or Sybase-based enterprise applications. Experience includes RDBMS application implementations, upgrades, customizations, and 3rd party reporting (Noetix, Discoverer, Business Objects etc.). Skills include performance tuning for existing application modules, including table optimization, indexing, cost-based optimizer, and workflow.

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