CLOUD AND ARCHIVING, THE WINNING TEAM

The term “cloud”, much maligned, deserves some clarification. In reality it is a new way of using distributed IT resources.

The cloud allows a company to capitalise on the power of the internet to access resources that it does not have in-house and cannot justify the expense of ownership for occasional use.

Indeed, with the cloud, all business structures, regardless of their size or activity can access the same distributed resources. It is a great way for smaller companies to scale their resources to meet a short term demand.

In just a few years, electronic mail has become an essential part of business. More than three-quarters of key data passes through email communication and trying to find old messages without having to access a central repository through a search function on a local machine can quickly become complex and time-consuming.

Email communications now form part of company legal documentation and should be treated as such. The email archive is important both for ensuring the efficient daily running of the company and for legal reasons, in instances when it has to be used as written evidence.

In this context, users often wonder what the best solution is; whether it is better to store data internally or to use an external cloud. The aim of this month’s newsletter is to help you have a clearer understanding of this crucial question.