EMC Irons Out Archiving
EMC Irons Out Archiving
April 17, 2007: In a busy week for EMC, the storage giant has toughened up its information management offerings, enhancing its EmailXtender and DiskXtender software and providing seamless integration for EMC Documentum software and Microsoft SharePoint.
EMC’s EmailXtender 4.8 builds on EMC’s existing software to provide a more flexible means to email archiving. According to Daryush Ashjari from the EMC Software team, the solution is about moving archiving capabilities to the desktop and providing increased functionality for end-users.
“The enhancements of this existing product are unleashing some key functionalities. The latest offering allows end-users to identify and archive messages,” says Ashjari. “Every email ends up in the same repository. But it’s giving end-users the ability to initiate their own archives.”
Overall, the EmailXtender 4.8 has been built up to increase operational efficiency by enabling corporate users, those who understand their content best, to categorise their own emails and determine where they should be archived. EMC says these improved capabilities will work to reduce the personal archives that are commonly established on individual PC desktops while also minimising non-business messages that have a habit of clogging up searches later on.
EMC says archiving in general is key to providing organisations the means to managing their electronically stored information. For Ashjari, it’s a matter of enterprise users realising not all information is created equal. “Organisations generally understand archiving,” he says. “They understand the benefits that archiving offers, the operation and performance benefits.”
EMC has also announced a new version of DiskXtender with an expansion on its policy-based file system archiving. “This is the sixth generation of this product,” says Ashjari. “Once you get to the sixth generation, you can start to address niche aspects and more on what users want.”
Part of those niche aspects include the move to offer support of Microsoft VSS, improved indexing and searching capabilities and support for the full integration of EMC solutions.
Rounding up the list of EMC announcements is the integration of EMC Documentation software with Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007. By allowing customers familiar with SharePoint to maintain the Microsoft front-end, EMC’s Documentum Archive Services for SharePoint allow organisations to centralise created content already managed in SharePoint.
EMC says the Documentum/SharePoint integration will allow customers to now work to satisfy information for compliance, leveraging Documentum usability to take place in the SharePoint environment.
According to Jeff Teper corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Group, ECM has become imperative for organisations handling the information explosion.
“Documentum delivers a variety of additional content management solutions that integrate with the ECM capabilities of SharePoint 2007 and the 2007 Office system,” says Teper. “The integrated offerings from EMC and Microsoft will allow users to take full advantage of the content services, processes and policies that apply to all corporate content within the familiar application they use every day.”