Enterprise information archiving (EIA) software is designed to assist in storing a company’s structured and unstructured original historical data. EIA software provides complete archives of business data across the board by incorporating unstructured data (for example, email messages and media files). Data can be stored on premises with local data servers, on cloud servers, or by using a hybrid of the two. These solutions are used throughout a business by any employee since all teams should be archiving their data for, at minimum, auditing purposes. EIA solutions are typically implemented and maintained by a company’s data team, and they can be used by companies of any size.
The main difference between EIA software and backup software is that EIA handles the original, historical data as opposed to a copy of that data.
To qualify for inclusion in the Enterprise Information Archiving category, a product must:
Store both structured and unstructured original, historical data
Provide data management options for archived data
Protect access to archived data