Archiving Data with IBM Optim
When you consider the costs of data growth, why are businesses so reluctant to retire data? If data in your system or application is no longer used or relevant, why keep it? One answer would be to archive the data, but to do so you will have to overcome challenges and risks, many of which are handled by Optim data management.
Most applications can adequately update and validate data, but what about inactive data? Only a select amount of applications provide a way to safely retire data, and even if the data is safely retired, it can be challenging retain access. Regulations in almost any industry also require that data remain accessible after retirement. Also, in most cases, it is necessary that the data not only be accessible, but your business must also be able to restore that same data to its original condition, application, system, etc.
Another challenge in archiving data is maintaining the relationship of the data. If a single set of information is referenced in multiple databases, it must be retired with those relations intact. If the data is simple, then creating subsets is relatively simple as well. However, it is rarely the case that the data is simple. With the technology running today’s systems, most applications use complex configurations of data – e.g., some data consists of hundreds of recursive, bi-directional, and other relationships.
In order to properly archive data, you will software that can do the following:
● Process various types of data relationships – e.g., intricate relationship cycles. (This also includes parent-child relationships.)
● Maintain integrity: during any process, there must be no adverse effect to the integrity of the data – e.g., no orphaned or corrupt data.
During the archive process, many businesses are concerned that the data they remove may still be needed, or even worse, data may inadvertently become corrupted in the process. Again, these reasons and the challenges mentioned above are some of the reasons many businesses eat the cost and do not retire data.
Some businesses consider developing in-house software to archive the retired data; however, spending the time and resources developing and designing such a system is a huge cost. Not only would the cost be significant in something so labor intensive, but a business would also have to maintain that system as applications and data continue to grow and change.
Instead of developing a system yourself or eating the cost, it makes sense to use software that already exists. IBM Optim application decommissioning (i.e., data archiving) software was created to save time and resources in archiving data. This same software also addresses each of the challenges mentioned above; it handles complex relationships, reduces costs, regulates data, retains access, etc. Though the challenges of properly archiving data are numerous and can seem overwhelming, IBM Optim Solutions provides software that happens to be simple and easy to use; archiving data is no longer as difficult as it once was.
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