Centera adapts itself to comply with the rules
Centera adapts itself to comply with the rules
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as do other regulatory bodies, have some very specific requirements as well as more general principles regarding the preservation of records.
Many of these regulations date back to the days of paper records. However, one SEC regulation that deals specifically with storage states that archival storage must be stored in a format that cannot be altered; in other words it cannot be overwritten or erased.
According to Sean Lanagan, director emerging markets, Centera Division, EMC, the rule is also very specific about the kind of storage medium companies need to use.
Previously people had to rely on optical technology to meet these requirements for electronic records by physically burning them on to a platter, Lanagan says. However, he claims that EMC's content addressed storage (CAS) solution and online archival storage medium, Centera, is the first disk-based storage product that allows people to use disk technology to store unalterable records.
Centera, though, was not originally designed with these regulatory requirements in mind and this functionality did not feature in the initial release of Centera when it was launched some two years ago.
"When we built the product we knew we wanted to go after the archive market and offer very efficient storage management, but I wish I could say we had the prescient insight to see how big the regulatory area was going to be," Lanagan explains. "As soon as we walked into the archiving space and starting selling it [Centera], the customers came right back to us and said: 'Great, I'm glad you're going to archive my data but I have these regulatory requirements and I hate optical disk. How are you going to help me?'"
In response to this customer demand, in the second version of Centera EMC introduced a retention period on records, which Lanagan says was an evolution of the core product. Placing a retention period on any record that gets stored prevents it from being deleted before the period expires. And, according to Lanagan, the retention period gets enforced down in the storage system itself, so that even administrators can't override it, making Centera in this respect as compliant as optical disk on to which records are physically burnt.
EMC released the second version of Centera only six months after the first version and Lanagan says that it took a dramatic reprioritisation of its development efforts. In addition, rather than create a "bolt on" feature, he says that EMC redesigned the core product and the way the system behaves in order to handle the requirements in a unique way and get it right the first time.
Lanagan also claims that the new functionality provides benefits additional to legal compliance, such as improved customer service and self service offerings. Bank customers, for example, can look up their financial history and refer back to old statements faster and cheaper. Another benefit, he says, is being able to manage and efficiently dispose of records when you're supposed to through means of a "shredding" function when the retention period expires. This not only reduces the expense of having to manage an infinitely growing quantity of data, it also removes any liability for superfluous information that could be discovered.
In December 2003 EMC announced that more than 300 partners and resellers had enrolled in its EMC Centera partner program since its inception and that more than 85 applications have been integrated with Centera and are generally available. Some key Centera partners include AGFA, FileNet, Fujitsu Siemens, KVS and Unisys. EMC also announced plans to double its investment in the Centera Partner Support Program in 2004.
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