Archival Tape Management: Know What s On Your Disparate Tapes by Jennifer Burl

In my last post about Archival Tape Management, I likened an enterprise's inherited tape formats to a house you just purchased along with an eclectic mix of vintage furniture. Keeping with that theme, you could also compare the tape media of a company that's been merged or acquired to a large collection of family slides, films and videos.

Think about it: A great deal of logistics must go into streamlining those brittle 1960s 8mm and Super 8mm films with oddly shaped 1980s Betamax cassettes and all different sizes of VHS tapes and minicassettes. Likewise, mergers, acquisitions and IT infrastructure changes have left many enterprises with multiple legacy tape backup systems and catalogs, all consuming valuable data-center space and resources.

Most of those firms are looking for a better way to manage archival tapes. What's more, they have an even greater imperative to provide on-demand access to this archival data: Auditors and lawyers may not be looking for your grandparents' home movies of their 1969 Miami Beach Christmas, but they may want to see three years of financials from the company you've just acquired.

Build an Adaptable (and Compliant) Catalog

As companies explore their archival tape cataloging options, they also must be able to provide support for additional heterogeneous tape backup systems that they'll likely need to integrate down the road. After all, M&As and IT infrastructure changes won't cease over concerns about managing legacy systems and tapes.

However, managing infrastructure and SLAs for data retrieval is just the beginning of an effective archival solution. Compliance is an even bigger concern: Without a clear view of the data on all those tapes, you can't be sure you're staying in sync with your retention program, nor can you find the data you need quickly. And if you hold information past your company's retention date, you're putting your business at risk.

A Happier Family of Tapes

What do you need to take away from these considerations? No matter what your plans are for an archival software solution, you'll need to efficiently manage existing tape archives now and incorporate incoming disparate tapes in the future.

The fastest, most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve catalog consolidation is through a third-party firm, such as Iron Mountain. Customers of Iron Mountain's Archival Tape Management solution need make only a single phone call to get the data they need for one or all of their tapes. In fact, the Iron Mountain team can likely restore your data in less time than it would take to find that Miami Beach reel in your home archives.

For more information on archival tape cataloging solution, watch our short (under 3 minutes) video.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/service-lines/data-backup-and-recov...
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