KVS Archives It All

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KVS has upgraded its flagship archiving software to provide a single interface for emails, file system documents, instant messages, and SharePoint
documents.

KVS is one of the few remaining standalone companies in the archiving space, having seen rivals like Legato, IXOS, and Educom get snapped up in recent months.

KVS claims “the largest installed customer base worldwide,” with more than 4.5 million user licenses of its flagship product, Enterprise Vault. The company reports its installed user base more than doubled last year.

The UK-based company is hoping to keep pace with its rivals with the new Enterprise Vault version 5, which it claims is “the only software package that provides customers with a unique framework to tailor a custom archiving policy for emails, file system documents, instant messages, and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server documents.”

But customers don’t have to buy all that functionality at once. Those that don’t require all the features available with Enterprise Vault 5 can implement additional capabilities as needed, customizing their policies to meet current storage and regulatory compliance needs while being able to meet future requirements.

“Enterprise Vault 5.0 is a very comprehensive solution, and in fact, with this release, they have added quite a bit of new functionality in areas that users, especially in regulated industries, are clamoring for,” says Enterprise Storage Group analyst Peter Gerr.

For example, Compliance Accelerator, an add-on chargeable module to Enterprise Vault, can help users comply with rules like NASD 3010 and 3110 that require features like random email sampling and review, Gerr says. Discovery Accelerator can help users more quickly conduct search and retrievals of archived emails, “which is extremely costly and risky if users can’t recover specific emails quickly,” he adds.

Gerr says other vendors with similar solutions include Legato’s EmailXtender, Zantaz/Educom and iLumin, among others. Vendors that handle Instant Message archiving specifically include Akonix, FaceTime, and IMLogic.

“Email and Instant Message archiving are among the hottest software solutions right now, driven by both compliance issues and the continual increase in the volume of email and the need to contain hardware and administrative costs associated with it,” Gerr told Enterprise Storage Forum.

Gerr says he expects further consolidation in the archiving market, but adds that KVS is “one of the few vendors in this market that can continue to grow and expand its customer base and survive on its own.”

KVS says the new product addresses compliance needs created by laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.

“The variety and sheer volume of business records that must now be archived drove us to develop this framework approach for our customers,” states Mary Kay Roberto, SVP of KVS North America. “In response to legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA, enterprises are archiving all types of documents, not just emails. By adopting a framework approach, organizations can pick and choose modules as required for their specific levels of business risk, storage optimization, and lifecycle management.”

KVS claims that “choice of storage platform is one of the most critical areas in long-term archiving. The wrong choice can cost millions and expose the business to undue regulatory and legal risk.”

With Enterprise Vault’s Open Storage Layer and partnerships with leading storage providers, KVS claims it “can anticipate how storage use will change over time.”

The Open Storage Layer addresses current storage requirements, provides a platform for dealing with legacy content, and allows integration of future technologies, according to the Arlington, Tex.-based company.

Enterprise Vault 5 was spurred by customer demand, KVS says. For example, T-Com, part of Deutsche Telekom, will use Enterprise Vault 5 for File System Archiving, deploying the product to about 100,000 T-Com employees in coming months. T-Com will use File System Archiving to archive multiple versions of a document and make them available via a Web interface, for storage efficiency and instant recovery without the need for a backup administrator. The user connects to his or her Web Archive and reinstates the necessary data with the click of a mouse.

One of the benefits of email and content archiving is the ability to maintain a long-term repository of corporate records, which could be vital in cases of litigation or regulatory compliance demands. KVS says Enterprise Vault’s Business Accelerators address this need by letting an organization access archived content for compliance and legal needs.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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