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Content-Addressable Storage: Page 3 of 6

Another area that could benefit from CAS is the company e-mail store. Duplicate and litigation-sensitive data travels the e-mail system every moment of every day. Most e-mail archiving systems have the necessary hooks to work with offerings from major CAS vendors. On a larger scale, consider incorporating financial and company-created documents--or any data deemed vital to the business--from sources as varied as accounting programs to Word. Companies that face legal-discovery processes can benefit from the rich metadata tags CAS supplies.

Not So Fast

The story isn't all positive: Many CAS devices have significant shortcomings. Metadata standardization is nonexistent, for example. The SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) is creating a standard that will allow for the migration of XML-based metadata between different CAS systems, but those efforts are yet incomplete. Keep an eye on SNIA and ask your vendors about plans to implement eventual CAS standards.

In addition, some vendors, such as Hitachi with its Archivas-based Content Archive Platform and Caringo's forthcoming software, do not support the tracking and removal of duplicate data.

No single product available provides all the metadata, data manipulation and industry standards required for widespread use. However, development has been proceeding quickly, and we'll be watching upcoming versions of these products closely.