WHITE PAPER SPON. Archive Migration: Opportunities and Risks. Published February An Osterman Research White Paper.

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1 WHITE PAPER N Archive Migration: An Osterman Research White Paper Published February 2014 sponsored by SPON sponsored by Osterman Research, Inc. P.O. Box 1058 Black Diamond, Washington USA Tel: Fax: info@ostermanresearch.com twitter.com/mosterman

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY archives are an essential tool for managing business information. Although many organizations store important business information on backups or in.pst files, the best practice for long-term, secure storage of critical information assets is in an archiving system. Because archives index content, store it (ideally) in an unalterable format on reliable media, and allow it be searched using robust search tools, strategic information assets that must be retained for many years are most secure when retained in an archiving system. THE NEED TO MIGRATE ARCHIVES Although the content in archives must typically be retained for many years and sometimes indefinitely there are a variety of issues and problems that occur with some frequency that necessitate the migration of archives from one platform to another. For example: Many organizations are migrating to new messaging platforms, such as Microsoft Exchange 2013, which typically necessitates migration to a new archiving solution. Modernization of core infrastructures is creating significant flux in the archiving market as even very large enterprises migrate some or all of their users to cloud-based solutions, such as Office 365. The adoption of the cloud, and particularly the growth of hybrid on-premises/cloud-based architectures, will necessitate archive migration. The more robust capability for long-term information retention in Exchange 2013 creates the opportunity for revised archiving strategies. The acquisition of one company by another or the creation of a new division into a separate operation will often require an archive migration. The former will typically require the consolidation of two archiving systems into one, while the latter will require the deployment of a new archive and migration of data into it. Migrating archives is not a trivial undertaking. The consolidation of multiple archives into a single archive, for example when a company migrated to a new archiving solution several years before, but maintains a legacy archive for older data. Reimplementing an archiving system with a completely redesigned architecture or when moving to a new storage technology. Other events, such as migrating user archives between sites or when moving to a new desktop infrastructure. Migrating archives is not a trivial undertaking. The migration process itself is fraught with risk of losing data, corrupting existing information, losing chain-of-custody for information, and interrupting user access to archives during the migration. An archive migration handled improperly can create significant damage to an organization, and so must be a priority for any organization that maintains an archive. ABOUT THIS WHITE PAPER This white paper discusses the several important issues associated with drivers for archive migration and the importance of managing these migrations properly. This paper also provides a brief overview of QUADROtech, the sponsor of this paper, and the company s relevant offerings Osterman Research, Inc. 1

3 ONGOING FLUX IN THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGES IN THE MIX OF MESSAGING PLATFORMS IN USE There is an ongoing change in messaging platforms a key factor in the decision to migrate to new archiving solutions. For example, since April 1996 Microsoft has introduced a new point version of Exchange, on average, every 10 months and a major new version every 29 months. Because Microsoft Exchange dominates the market for business , as shown in Figure 1, and because Symantec Enterprise Vault is the leading archiving solution in use, a large number of organizations are dealing simultaneously with the impact of Microsoft s changes in desktop operating systems, messaging platform and cloud offerings in the context of their current deployment of Enterprise Vault. Anytime there is an introduction of a new messaging platform, such as Exchange 2013, there will be significant flux in the market as organizations assess the benefits of the new platform and decide how and when they should migrate. Microsoft has added additional angst for many decision makers with Office 365, a cloud-based offering that includes hosted Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Office and other applications that traditionally have been served by on-premises infrastructure. As noted in Figure 1, growth in the adoption of Office 365 is expected to be significant by the end of This is part of a larger trend toward migrating key applications to the cloud, even for large enterprises that previously would have traditionally managed all of their critical business applications on-premises. Figure 1 Distribution of Users by Messaging Platform Q4/2013 and Q4/2014 Anytime there is an introduction of a new messaging platform, such as Exchange 2013, there will be significant flux in the market. By the end of 2014 the number of organizations adopting Exchange 2013 is expected to increase by more than 300%. The introduction of a major new upgrade of a messaging platform will introduce a significant change in the mix of messaging systems in use as organizations migrate to the new platform. As noted, growth in the adoption of Office 365 is expected to be substantial by the end of 2014, demonstrating the willingness of organizations to adopt cloud technology. As the benefits of archiving in the cloud, for example with Mimecast or Symantec s Osterman Research, Inc. 2

4 Enterprise Vault.cloud, becomes more widely realized it will be important to address migration, which will be a major barrier to adoption. Although archiving is primarily beneficial for maintaining information assets for purposes of ediscovery, regulatory compliance, storage management and retention of corporate knowledge, one of its chief ancillary benefits is the ability to help organizations migrate to new systems with little interruption. For example, an organization that migrates to a new messaging platform can more easily populate it from a well-managed archiving solution than they can without an archiving solution in place. ROBUST ARCHIVE MANAGEMENT IS CRITICAL Multiple Osterman Research surveys of end users have found that the typical corporate user employs his or her system for approximately 150 minutes per day. This includes sending or receiving messages, searching for content stored in the system, managing contacts, managing tasks, etc. Add to this the fact that continues to be the primary file transport system in most organizations and is used to send and receive important business documents like purchase orders, contracts, proposals and the like. Because many users store content within instead of on file shares or in SharePoint, is a key repository of critical business content. Consequently, is the most important single source of business content in most organizations, and so good archive management is essential. ARCHIVING SOLUTIONS ARE INCREASING IN USE archives are a critical source of corporate business information. For example, Osterman Research forecasts that the North American installed base of archiving users will increase from 82.9 million in 2012 to million by 2015, representing an average annual growth rate of 15.6% i. Although many organizations do not archive , archiving has become a best practice at the majority of mid-sized and large organizations worldwide. contains the primary record of communications and collaboration for most organizations, and so archiving this rich source of content is essential for compliance with regulatory obligations, legal requirements, data mining and other purposes. archiving is also an important tool in helping organizations to manage their storage more effectively by moving older and less frequently accessed content to archival storage. The importance of archives for both the long-term storage of critical business information and user access to this information should not be underestimated. For example, our research found that nearly four in five organizations that has deployed an archiving system considers it to be either important or mission critical, as shown in the following figure. archiving has become a best practice at the majority of mid-sized and large organizations worldwide. Further corroborating the critical importance of ready access to archives is Figure 2 that shows that an inability to access archives for just one business day would be largely or completely unacceptable to more than two in five organizations. Even a relatively short outage one that lasted only 60 minutes would be intolerable to 12% of those surveyed. Our research also found that while 63% of organizations with an archive system in place maintain only a single archive, 37% have multiple archives. Among this latter population, 39% plan to consolidate their multiple archives into a single repository Osterman Research, Inc. 3

5 Figure 2 Importance of the Corporate Archiving System Figure 3 Tolerance of Archive Downtime of Various Lengths % Responding Largely or Completely Unacceptable Osterman Research, Inc. 4

6 PLANS FOR ARCHIVING MIGRATION In a major Osterman Research survey of the archiving market, one in ten respondents planned on retaining their current archive in a frozen state, allowing no changes to the system or its currently archived data, as shown in Figure 4. This approach eliminates the cost and complexity of data migration, but does require ongoing licensing. It can also result in other significant challenges downstream, such as an inability to get support for the frozen system, the need under an ediscovery request to search across multiple systems, and the challenges of maintaining legal holds across multiple disparate repositories. More than one-third of those surveyed, the largest group, have not yet decided which approach to take. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet, and as noted above, both approaches come with pros and cons. Figure 4 Plans for Currently Archived /Other Content if Planning to Use a New Archiving Vendor or Provider Among organizations that are planning a change to a new archiving vendor or provider, the majority plan on migrating their archived data into the new system. When introducing a new solution to replace any existing system, what to do about existing, archived data is a major decision point. The ideal approach is frequently to migrate existing data into the new system, but that approach comes with a number of attendant challenges, not the least of which involve migration costs and incompatible data formats between the two systems. There are often situations when a new product offers significant functionality improvements over current tools, but the cost and complexity involved in moving away from the current system can be perceived to negate any incremental business value. Among organizations that are planning a change to a new archiving vendor or provider, the majority plan on migrating their archived data into the new system. The only difference is the speed with which they will do so, with most planning a go-slow approach. MIGRATION AND THE CLOUD The conventional model of deploying archiving using on-premise servers and software (or appliances) requires a certain amount of trust trust in the technology Osterman Research, Inc. 5

7 offered by the hardware and software vendors, trust in the quality of the ways these technologies have been implemented, trust in the responsiveness of their support when things go wrong, trust in the patches and upgrades that are offered, trust in third party providers, and so forth. However, for those charged with managing archiving in the cloud, a significant increase in the level of trust is required of the providers offering these services because that data is now in the hands of a remote third party. Not only must decision makers place trust in the quality of the hardware and software deployed in the cloud providers data centers, the ways their technologies have been implemented, the responsiveness of support staff, etc., but now trust must be placed in several other attributes of the provider(s). These include the quality of the technical team managing the data center, the quality of the management team that runs the business, the overall financial health of the provider s business, their integrity in managing sensitive and confidential customer data, and their responsiveness in migrating data back to their customers for any reason. Consequently, the issue of migration becomes much more important in a cloud environment. Due diligence is extraordinarily important in selecting cloud providers because of the high stakes involved. For example, cloud vendors must be vetted on a variety of parameters, including their business model, uptime, financial health, backup strategies and redundant capabilities. While due diligence is important when selecting on-premise solutions, an order of magnitude more care must be applied when vetting cloud providers. Even so, organizations that manage their archive in the cloud must have a robust migration strategy, if only because of the potential however unlikely that a cloud provider might not continue operations indefinitely. For example, the failure of Nirvanix ii (which gave its customers very little time to migrate data from its service iii ), MegaCloud iv and Cirtas Systems v are examples of cloud providers that have ceased operations in the recent past. In fact, Gartner predicts that one in four leading cloud services providers will be acquired, go bankrupt or otherwise cease operations by While Osterman Research does not hold to such a pessimistic view at least in terms of its magnitude there will clearly be some level of operational disruption in the cloud over the next few years. As a result, a migration plan that uses proven technology from a leading migration provider is essential if and when it becomes necessary to migrate on an emergency basis, as well as for those situations, as described elsewhere in this report, that call for migration to a new archiving platform. A migration plan that uses proven technology from a leading migration provider is essential. It is important to note that Osterman Research is not arguing against the use of small and/or startup cloud providers. Many of them have solid business models, provide excellent service and have a good record of uptime. Large does not necessarily imply that superior service will be offered, nor does small necessarily imply the opposite. KEY ISSUES TO CONSIDER Osterman Research recommends several important areas to consider in the context of robust management of archives: archives are essential repositories of critical information archives contain a large proportion of the typical organization s critical information assets content that is necessary to satisfy ediscovery, regulatory, compliance and other requirements. Further, much of this information is sensitive or confidential and must be protected from potential breaches or other unauthorized access. Moreover, this content must be readily accessible to those who need it, among whom are legal counsel, senior managers, information auditors, researchers and others Osterman Research, Inc. 6

8 What is the best way to migrate data? Once decision makers realize that data needs to be migrated, the next decision is the manner in which this migration will be accomplished. If the migration is to be managed internally, what will be the impact on IT staff resources, their learning curve in developing expertise in the migration process, the potential delay on other projects, etc.? Decision makers need to understand the importance of seriously considering expert third parties to manage migrations for them. Archiving systems must be maintained on suitable platforms archives are often maintained on storage systems that do not provide the level of reliability or access that key information accessors require. For example, our research found that 41% of organizations IT departments do not back up the archive on a daily basis and 13% do not back up archived at all, putting archived at risk. The critical importance of chain-of-custody The chain-of-custody for electronic content must be tightly controlled, not only for content that is maintained in the archive on a day-to-day basis, but especially when content is migrated from one archive to another. Maintaining the chain-ofcustody log will show that content was collected and retained without alteration throughout its entire lifecycle. Further, it is critical to use a migration solution that does not write data back to the source archive. Regulatory or legal problems An archive migration process that imposes unexpected delays can create legal or regulatory problems for an organization. In the United States, for example, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) impose time limits on various aspects of a civil suit, and so responses to inquiries some of which will depend upon timely access to archived data must be completed in a timely manner. Preventing loss of data and corruption Corrupted data in an archive can be just as harmful as losing chain-of-custody, since some or all of the data may not migrate properly to the new archive and so will be lost. Consequently, it is important to ensure the integrity of the data prior to the migration and throughout the entire process so that only authenticated data is moved from the old archive to the new one. Data that is corrupted or lost entirely can be the result of hardware errors, malware in an database, the manner in which an archiving vendor might have connected to the archive, or that are migrated to the new archiving platform. It is essential to understand how the migration vendor addresses corrupted data coming from an archive, since this can result in the loss of chainof-custody for important data and overall loss of data. If an archiving migration is not handled well or in a timely manner, it can result in a loss of user productivity. Keeping users productive during the migration process If an archiving migration is not handled well or in a timely manner, it can result in a loss of user productivity. This can be a serious problem if there are tight timelines involved, such as responding to an ediscovery request or a regulatory audit in a timely manner. As a result, the choice of an archiving migration vendor should be based in large part on their ability to maintain user productivity throughout the migration process. New archiving solutions should be considered We also recommend that decision makers consider migration to new archiving solutions for a number of reasons: o Some legacy archiving solutions do not provide the storage scalability or search performance that are required to satisfy current information management requirements. Some organizations originally underestimated their archiving requirements when implementing the current solution and so need a significant upgrade to their archiving capability Osterman Research, Inc. 7

9 o o o As a result of mergers or acquisitions, some organizations maintain multiple archiving solutions and so can realize more efficiency and lower costs of information management by consolidating multiple archives into a single, new solution. As organizations inevitably migrate to new on-premises solutions like Exchange 2013, or as they migrate to the cloud, they should consider migrating to a new archiving solution that can manage information more effectively. Some existing archiving solutions cannot manage the types of data that organizations should be retaining, such as social media content or files, and so a new solution should be implemented that can accommodate these new requirements. SUMMARY It is important for decision makers to understand that migrating to a new archiving platform is not simply a matter of copying files from one location to another. An archive migration must be managed in a controlled and structured manner because of the critical nature of the information stored in the archive and the ease with which it can be lost or corrupted, its chain-of-custody interrupted, or its ability to be authenticated lost. For organizations that rely on the information in their archive for legal or regulatory compliance namely, the majority of organizations that have implemented archives proper migration is essential. Third party migration tools can provide important benefits when migrating to a new archiving platform. ABOUT QUADROTECH QUADROtech Solutions is an independent, privately held company headquartered in the city of Zug, Switzerland with offices in the US and the UK. QUADROtech was formed in January 2012 by a group of consultants, developers and solution experts who shared a common history and skill-set in solutions for Enterprise Vault and Microsoft Exchange. Most of the core team started out at a boutique migration company in Switzerland that was acquired by GlassHouse Technologies. Having built a successful migration practice at Glasshouse the original group of migration experts, which created the original software, carried a management buyout of the Intellectual Property and took over the development and product management teams to form QUADROtech The QUADROtech solution suite started in 2005 as a set of tools used for.pst migration and Symantec Enterprise Vault data management. The suite has continuously evolved and grown based on changing customer needs and technologies. The Symantec Enterprise Vault Management Capability has expended to embrace archive migration as a whole. QUADROtech has paid close attention to ensuring that the suite is scalable and effective for customers of all sizes across different technologies we understand that large customers face significantly different challenges than smaller ones but that each has their own special needs. The solution suite has been used by many customers and partners across the globe, with international integrators such as Symantec, Dell, HP, EMC and CapGemini to providing strong solutions for corporate customers. To migrate archives from one platform to another, or back into Exchange, QUADROtech provides ArchiveShuttle. ArchiveShuttle is the proven solution whenever users and data need to be moved between archive versions, sites or Osterman Research, Inc. 8

10 geographies. It is also the first scalable solution to migrate data between mail archives, Exchange Personal Archives and the leading Archive-in-the- Cloud vendors or back into Exchange. While initially built as the class-leading Symantec Enterprise Vault migration tool it now supports a growing set of other archiving platforms. Fully managed migration back into Exchange is also possible. Complementing ArchiveShuttle is PSTFlightDeck to provide controlled migration of.pst files to finally eliminate the PST problem. In addition to cross platform archive migration QUADROtech also develops solutions for the daily management of Symantec Enterprise Vault. This includes a storage platform agnostic HA tool, EVNearSynch, which provides immediate failover to a secondary copy should the primary archive fail. QUADROtech employees and solutions come with a wealth of field experience that can help you to complete your project with speed and reliability Osterman Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form by any means, nor may it be distributed without the permission of Osterman Research, Inc., nor may it be resold or distributed by any entity other than Osterman Research, Inc., without prior written authorization of Osterman Research, Inc. Osterman Research, Inc. does not provide legal advice. Nothing in this document constitutes legal advice, nor shall this document or any software product or other offering referenced herein serve as a substitute for the reader s compliance with any laws (including but not limited to any act, statue, regulation, rule, directive, administrative order, executive order, etc. (collectively, Laws )) referenced in this document. If necessary, the reader should consult with competent legal counsel regarding any Laws referenced herein. Osterman Research, Inc. makes no representation or warranty regarding the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this document. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED REPRESENTATIONS, CONDITIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE DETERMINED TO BE ILLEGAL. REFERENCES i ii iii iv v Source: Content Archiving Market Trends Through 2015, Osterman Research, Inc Osterman Research, Inc. 9