Maybe your boss said he wanted one. Or the compliance officer told you the company needed an archiving system to protect itself. With so many archiving systems on the market, putting together a request for proposal (RFP) for an archiving program for structured (database), semistructured (email) or unstructured (files and documents) data is a key step. It's equally important that your team is well-prepared to evaluate vendor RFPs so you end up with a product that fits your company's needs at a price that doesn't break your budget.

Archiving products are different from backup programs, but some archiving products work closely with backup apps (see "Archives aren't backups," below). In some cases, data is archived to comply with government or industry regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In addition, last December the U.S. Court made changes to its Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to add more details about how civil cases should consider electronic documents such as email. The bottom line is that storage administrators need to have a much better handle on what data is available and where it's stored.