The death of tape as a corporate storage medium is an exaggeration. The vast majority of organizations still use tape storage to back up data either onsite or off-site. As the volume of data continues to rise exponentially, off-site tape capacity looks to to increase significantly.
Historically, the low cost of tape storage has only encouraged organizations to keep and store all data “just in case.” This has served to unnecessarily bloat IT budgets and increase e-discovery risks and costs when an investigation, litigation or merger/ acquisition occur.
The problem is that many organizations, even household names, have lost track of the data that they have stored on tape. There are many fundamental questions that cannot be answered quickly or efficiently:
Some information never expires and may already be in storage, such as proprietary drawings, prototypes or formulas. If this and other types of data must be retained for longer time periods, what is the plan to ensure it remains accessible as current technology becomes obsolete and the operational costs to maintain legacy systems purely for restoration purposes is no longer practical?
If an organization doesn’t address these questions via a well-defined process, the default answer for both stored data and legacy systems automatically becomes “keep everything.” On a practical level, information about managing types of content is rarely tracked and communicated via an existing Service Level Agreement (SLA) and the unnecessary expense and risk multiplies. Lack of clarity about what is stored on tape is only one problem. Another important issue is that historical data can be difficult to access from tape storage. Organizations routinely back up and store information, thinking their processes are strong and the data is sound. However, a variety of issues including user error and hardware/software faults can hinder data retrieval, some of which are never discovered until the organization is in reactive crisis mode and scrambling for alternatives.
An organization has a duty to preserve relevant data upon reasonable notice of litigation. And many times, it’s only when a company is required to access the data that common problems are encountered, including:
Historically, it has been time consuming, technically difficult, and cost prohibitive to incorporate legacy data into an organization’s overall information life cycle management (ILM) plan. After relying on IT to restore the data, legal would work with IT to analyze the relevant data required to support an investigation or lawsuit. Due to budget and infrastructure limitations, restoring thousands or tens of thousands of tapes was not feasible.
The problem has been addressed by using technology to streamline the entire process. Rather than rely on a false sense of security, many corporations seek expert consultative assistance (It's key to ensure they have proven experience using forensically sound methods and deep expertise in legal, compliance, and IT issues) to help them manage stored data more efficiently and reduce the load on IT personnel and infrastructure.
The perfect storm of a highly regulated environment, rapidly growing amounts of data, and the need for greater responsiveness and transparency means that organizations need to address the issue of poorly managed tape storage sooner rather than later. It's not in anyone’s interest to leave the huge task of sorting and cataloging data stored on aging tapes to the 11th hour, or when regulators come knocking at the door.