SNIA Survey Says: Archived Data at Risk

By Greg McNevin

August 13, 2007: The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has released the results of its latest 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey, and done so with a warning that 276 long-term archive practitioners believe that digital information is at risk of being lost.

Released by the SNIA’s Data Management Forum and its 100 Year Archive Task Force, the report discusses the operating practices, requirements and issues facing organisations managing large amounts of information for extended periods of time.

The survey was conducted online between November 2006 and January 2007 and drew 276 responses from government and non-government agencies around the world, as well as vendors, integrators and other IT companies.

The survey found that long-term digital information retention needs are real with 80 percent of respondents having information they must hang on to for 50 years, and 68 percent claiming they have data that must be kept for more than 100 years.

With anything over 15 years requiring multiple physical media and logical format migrations, this long-term storage presents a critical problem to many organisations, especially considering a mere 30 percent claim to be migrating information at regular intervals according to the survey.

Database information is considered to be the most at risk of loss, and overall an alarming 70 percent of respondents claimed that they are ‘highly dissatisfied’ with their expected ability to read their retained information in 50 years.

“Ensuring that information is properly archived for the required period of time is particularly vital today,” said Juergen Arnold chairman of SNIA Europe. “More and more directives are being published at global, pan-European and country-level requiring that organisations preserve data in a safe and accessible format for up to tens of years.”

SNIA board chairman Vincent Franceschini adds that due to compliance, security and legal risks, all types of organisations being deftly challenged by the long-term retention of digital information. He claims that this study “identifies requirements from the practitioner’s point of view and confirms that this pending crisis must be addressed by developing standards and best practices consistent with the operating practice we call information lifecycle management (ILM).”

Overall, SNIA says that those surveyed felt that current practices are too manual, prone to error, costly and lack adequate coordination across the organisation. The association says that its Data Management Forum is now striving at address the long-term storage issues raised by the survey.

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