Index Engines Helps Enterprisers Migrate Long Term Retention Data on Backup Tapes to AWS

Information management company Index Engines, Inc. is delivering a cost-effective solution to migrate data of value from legacy backup tapes to the AWS cloud.

The solution eliminates the need for the legacy backup software and provides an intelligent migration path to AWS. This facilitates improved access and management of the content as well as the retirement of the legacy tapes and infrastructure, saving significant data center expenses.

Current ROI analysis show a potential of up to 76% savings ^(*) after three years based on current maintenance, offsite storage, eDiscovery service provider and associated legacy backup data fees.

“Our customers want to access their corporate data including valuable intellectual property that is hidden on offline tapes,” said Sabina Joseph, head, global storage partnerships and alliances, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Index Engines makes it possible to move a single-instance or culled data set of data from legacy tape onto AWS so it can be accessed anytime, anywhere by legal teams or any knowledge workers who can benefit from the data assets.“

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The company simplifies migration of data from legacy backup tapes to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). A culled data set, or single instance of the tape contents, is migrated ensuring all metadata remains forensically sound.

The native de-duped data, including unstructured files, email and databases, is stored in AWS. A metadata or full content index is available to search, manage based on retention policies, and access so data can be retrieved based on business needs.

The costs and risks associated with leaving ‘dark’ and unknown user data on legacy bacup tapes is significant and goes well beyond the compliance and regulatory risks of not knowing what exists, including:

• Old backup software maintenance costs as well as the manpower required to support it

• Aged libraries and media servers under maintenance

• Offsite tape storage costs and retrieval fees

• eDiscovery restore requests by expensive service providers for specific files or user mailboxes

• Hidden intellectual property and business assets that are not leveraged

The solution supports access to and migration from all common backup formats.

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“Legacy backup tapes are hard to access, impossible to search and expensive to restore, yet they contain vital corporate records that must be preserved to meet legal and regulatory requirements,” said Tim Williams, CEO, Index Engines. “We’re excited to work with AWS to make that data accessible, responsive and governable.“

The company provides a number of flexible pricing models that allow organizations to implement the solution in their data center or ship tapes to a secure firm’s certified processing lab.

When deploying inside the firewall, the technology can be managed by internal resources or via the company’s remote assurance program. It provides the technical resources necessary to execute a tape to AWS migration from remotely installing the software, to processing the tapes and migrating data of value to the cloud.

^(*) Savings of 76% based on this cost scenario