Advice for Your College’s Digital Archive Solution
Do your due diligence
Coleman says before colleges invest in a particular archival solution, they should know what their needs are, and know what resources they already have.
That way, colleges will know which solutions will work for them, and which ones won’t.
“Zetta is not inexpensive, even with educational discounts,” Coleman says. “It’s not a cheap product, but on the other hand, it delivers a fair amount of value. Most colleges and universites of the size of the University of Arizona have fairly large IT organizations. They probably have multiple data centers, they are probably used to doing this in a complex way and to be honest, Zetta is not the best solution for that situation. I see Zetta as being a small to medium business company.”
Look at the total cost of ownership
Tsaio say colleges should look at how much an archival solution will cost in total before investing.
He says colleges can sometimes fall into the trap of overlooking certain expenses, such as customer service costs.
He says when colleges account for the total cost of ownership, they won’t be surprised when the bill comes.
“Nowadays, I think budgets tend to be tighter and people want to look at the most cost-effective solution, and that’s a good thing,” Tsaio says. “I think what people tend to fall into is looking at storage costs…The total cost is important because I think people forget to calculate the human cost, the IP manager, the person that manages the backup systems, and make sure the backups are running…Many times they’re not aware of an issue because they’re not monitoring it closely enough.”
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!
Leave a Reply