Basically, ZL Technologies' solution captures all (or nearly all) of the user-created data that an enterprise needs in an archive. That includes information from IT-managed servers, such as Microsoft's Office and SharePoint Server, and related files systems. Unified Archive also incorporates data from sources that an enterprise may be legally required to capture for possible litigation, but which IT typically does not manage, such as instant messages and Blackberry communications.
Note that we used the term "semi-structured" instead of "unstructured." Semi-structured data is often classified as unstructured data, but there is an important distinction: true unstructured data is bit-mapped information, such as photographs or videos. Without sophisticated analytic software, such as for-pattern recognition, unstructured data can only be perceived and analyzed by human senses, such as sight or hearing. Unstructured data can be electronically managed by its file metadata, but this offers very limited functionality. In any event, unstructured data is unlikely to be used in eDiscovery in very many cases.
The same is not true for semi-structured data. The key is that, in addition to its metadata, the content of semi-structured data can be searched with numerous tools. The ability to search (and hence to classify) such content-based data is mandatory for eDiscovery and other purposes. The bottom line is that to be fully effective and deliver on its promises, an archive has to capture as much relevant semi-structured information as possible.
Hidden here are two big requirements. The first is that the archive must scale to handle all the data needed for specific processes, and that it is able to perform any and all related tasks, for example, to classify and search information in a timely manner. Both these cases are areas where active archiving solutions may stumble.
To avoid these problems, ZL Technologies states that it has built Unified Archive at carrier-class, not just enterprise-class, strength. What does that mean? Enterprise-class infers robustness and reliability, which is fine for many purposes. But "carrier-class" relates to the requirements of telecommunications companies, whose humongous volumes of data and performance requirements go far beyond what is required generally of average enterprises to large scale multi-national enterprises that operate data centers on the level of communications carriers. The implication here is that if Unified Archiving is good enough for a telco; it is good enough for the largest enterprise.
