As we have covered previously on this blog, there comes a point when legacy solutions used to secure company data in an archive reach the end of their service life. Older archives may not reflect the needs presented by a modern market – they might be missing features that are critical to continued use of company data, or they may not reflect current eDiscovery and GDPR standards.
As data migrations become more common for businesses and as aging systems make such migrations necessary, it becomes important to look harder at the processes involved, when a company should consider migrating their data, and how the process takes place.
One of the most important and consistently growing sources of business data are emails, which have rapidly overtaken all other critical business data in scale. Ensuring capture and archiving of emails is critical for business continuity, and as such email archives must remain up to date for the best results. Fortunately, TECH-ARROW can lend your business our expertise in ensuring your email archive migration comes off without complications or delay, and that your company can continue operating without interruptions.
When is it important to migrate your data?
CorporateFinanceInstitute presents the following scenarios as potential reasons to prompt migrations of data:
• Replacement, upgrade, and expansion of storage systems and equipment
• Legacy software upgrade and replacement
• Firms moving from local storage system to a cloud-based system to optimize operations
• Website consolidation
• Installation of new systems to coexist and augment existing applications
• Infrastructure maintenance
• Switching to centralized databases
• Consolidation of information systems
• Data center relocation
Businesses may encounter any one or multiple of these scenarios at a time; in the case of migrating archived information, the most common situation (and one becoming more common as time goes on) is legacy software upgrades and replacement. The business environment has evolved at a rapid pace, and archiving systems have not all kept pace.
What changes can render our current archiving system insufficient?
There are a few key developments in the recent years: first among these is the simple quantity of generated data. According to Lifewire, the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day exceeded 293 billion in 2019 and is forecast to grow to more than 347 billion by the end of 2023, with the average office worker receiving 121 a day. To add to this, the Great Reshuffle has seen onboarding and offboarding rates skyrocket. Archiving and backup systems that have not kept pace with developments may find themselves swamped by the quantity of data, and users may find it difficult to find concrete information easily and efficiently.
Second is the question of security. Critical business information, for example invoices attached to emails, should be captured by your archive. But in the case of legacy systems, the way this archive is structured and designed will not reflect the current state of the field. The average ransomware payment is now over 570,000, according to GRCWorldForums. This has prompted an arms race between malicious actors and cybersecurity developments. While the most modern systems are continually improving, including with the ongoing transition to Zero Trust, legacy systems can still have older vulnerabilities.
Finally, there is the question of legal requirements and government regulation. The past two decades have seen increases in restrictions and guidelines on how companies can retain data – most well-known being the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but including others like the British Data Protection Act (Britain’s 2018 adoption of GDPR standards) and state-level frameworks in the United States. While eDiscovery requires retention of critical data and the ability to make it available in the case of court orders, these regulatory frameworks instead dictate what information must not be retained. Modern archiving systems that have been thoroughly updated can ensure companies are easily brought into compliance with these restrictions, but legacy software may not have the necessary updates or features to reflect newest requirements.
Migrate your email archive safely and efficiently with contentGATE
No matter what reason your company has for changing your archive solution, contentGATE is the migrator tool to make this period of transition easier. Our tool offers you absolute control over your migration, ensuring that your emails are migrated in a coherent form, without the accompanying errors that amateur migrations can bring.
Our migrator tool is the correct choice to ensure your migration from or between over twenty-five of the top archiving systems and Microsoft 365. Whether moving between internal physical servers or migrating your business to the Cloud, contentGATE is the tool to use.
If you are considering an email archive migration, do not hesitate; contact us for a free consultation and demonstration of our tool, and let us show you why our company has become the preferred choice for our clients over our ten years and hundreds of migrations long experience.
Take the best steps to protect your data – with TECH-ARROW.
