EMC Archives Unstructured Data

EMC Corp. is uniting configurable policy-based content management with storage resource allocation tools to help customers cut costs by automating archiving capabilities.

EMCs Documentum CSS (Content Storage Services) software, which will be announced this week and available next month, lets storage administrators register a storage device with Documentum Content Server and automate changes of policy in how unstructured content is treated. It also lets administrators migrate archived data to the appropriate storage platform and storage tier, said officials of the Hopkinton, Mass., company.

Using Documentum CSS, customers can attach user-defined attributes to files and content. Attributes include access control levels, life-cycle stages, sharing permissions, related documents, transaction history and access time frames.

Many storage customers have discovered that manual archiving of unstructured information to meet regulatory mandates can become too complex, error-prone and expensive to manage, say industry analysts.

Wayne Aiello, who expects to deploy Documentum CSS in his EMC Symmetrix DMX800 disk array, said the software should pay huge dividends by helping set up sophisticated controls for managing his companys 25 million documents and customer invoices.

“Today, there is obviously quite a bit of work that has to be done to offload older documents off of primary servers that are high-availability servers onto tape and other mediums,” said Aiello, vice president of e-business services for Corporate Express Inc. “CSS will be a big cost savings, allowing us to have [schedule-based policies] on the content itself. … This would allow us to use document metadata to more accurately move content around and put it in the appropriate storage facility.”

Aiello said Documentum will be critical to setting up levels of archiving based on customers contract needs.

“Were getting requests from customers to maintain archives longer than we traditionally would because of their auditors. For us to be able to do this through software as opposed to writing our own code or having to manage it ourselves will be a big plus for us moving forward,” said Aiello in Broomfield, Colo.

In addition to supporting all EMC storage platforms, Documentum CSS supports arrays from IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., Hitachi Data Systems Corp. and Network Appliance Inc.

Documentum CSS features an event-triggered policy engine, audit events and migration logs for chargeback and reporting duties, policy creation and management tools to alter storage policies, and new API classes to expose content storage policies, EMC officials said.

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