Kroll Ontrack Launches Data Management Solution: DataAdvisor

Organizations are increasingly burdened with legacy data management protocols and the high cost of maintaining multiple legacy systems to ensure data access for legal or regulatory requests.

In response, Kroll Ontrack, Inc. announced DataAdvisor, a data management solution that consolidates backup catalogs from various systems and mediums into a single, searchable inventory, providing clear insight into legacy data and eliminating legacy maintenance costs.

“It’s not uncommon for a client to tell us they’ve got 100 ten-year old backup tapes in a storage room and are unsure of the information contained on them,” says Todd Johnson, VP, data and storage technologies, Kroll Ontrack. “Because regulated industries like finance and healthcare need to keep and maintain access to regulated data for a period of time for legal reasons, they are compelled to not only retain the physical tapes, but also the expensive legacy systems needed to restore tape data. Ontrack DataAdvisor solves these challenges by aggregating legacy backup catalogs from all systems into one easy-to-search inventory. As a result, organizations not only reduce risk by knowing precisely what data is stored in their tape archive, Kroll Ontrack can restore targeted data as needed allowing organizations to essentially decommission legacy systems outright.“

According to a recent firm’s global survey of 720 IT administrators, 37% of organizations run more than one backup system concurrently, adding significant cost and complexity to their data management practices. Further, 34% of organizations store and manage more than 100 tapes, more than 50% plan to replace their backup system in the next two years, and 43% are looking to teminate their maintenance contracts for their legacy storage systems.

“When the current system becomes the legacy system, which for many organizations means they are now strapped with multiple legacy systems and duplicative data to maintain, the time is ripe to evaluate legacy data management strategies to make informed, cost-effective decisions around data access, retention, migration and defensible deletion,” said Tom McCaffrey, director, enterprise solutions, Kroll Ontrack. “Defensible deletion of data is an enormous challenge organizations face, one often exacerbated by the over preservation of data in response to litigation or other matters. Without clear insight into the specific information contained within legacy systems, IT groups struggle to selectively target only the relevant data involved in a particular legal matter.”

“When you are unsure of what data you have, or you are unable to target what you need, the default when faced with a preservation request is to take it all,” says McCaffrey. “It’s an expensive and inefficient approach, and leaves organizations with a large set of data on hold and no means of defensibly deleting what is not critical to the matter. Ontrack DataAdvisor provides certainty around knowing what information resides on backup systems, empowering organizations to make defensible, fact-based decisions around what data to maintain and what data to dispose.”

To create the searchable inventory, the company ingests catalog information directly from backup tapes or from an exported catalog database file. Catalog data is then hosted in firm’s secure global data centers, while physical tapes are stored with the company or a third-party vendor or returned to the client. When needed, DataAdvisor clients simply search the inventory to identify targeted content and request restores for only what is needed.