Businesses are increasingly looking at whether storage
media will allow them to retain data for more than 100 years,
research from the
Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has
found.
Of 276
archivists questioned, 80% of respondents had information that
needed to be kept for more than 50 years, and 68% said they had to
keep this data for more than 100 years.
However, 70% of respondents said they were "highly dissatisfied"
with their projected ability to read retained data in 50 years'
time.
Juergen Arnold, chairman of SNIA Europe, said, "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 decades. This should be an essential element
of most storage strategies going forward."
Overall, those surveyed felt that current practices were
labour-intensive, prone to error, costly and lacking adequate
co-ordination across the organisation.
Information classification and collaboration between those who
own information and administrators were seen as important practices
for effective data storage strategies.
One survey respondent said, "When using a digital archive,
understand that you will have a long, hard, expensive road to keep
the records. You have to think about the ability of your
great-great-great-great-grandchildren to be able to read and
logically interpret what your history was."
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