I attended Storage Network World in San Diego last week and found the event to be very useful and informative, as always.

In one of the sessions, the speaker noted that storage management tends to be a relatively low priority in most organizations, resulting in fewer resources being directed toward archiving and related technologies than should be the case. The speaker's other point was that those charged with managing storage in their organizations need to raise the value of the archive.

The latter point is particularly telling, since in most organizations, outsiders value their archive of information more than internal decision makers do. For example, since e-mail and other electronic content that contains business records is of interest to regulators, these regulators place a fairly significant value on the records that you own. Of course, you pay to preserve these records, but regulators value them nonetheless. Similarly, the lawyers engaged by the people who sue your organization also place a significant value on your business records, since they are increasingly likely to ask for them during the discovery phase of a legal action.

Do your organization’s senior management and other decision makers value your archives this much? They should. Your archives contain your organization’s corporate memory, the record of your dealings with clients, employees, business partners, members of your supply chain and others. Your e-mail database, for example, most likely contains a record of what has been said to your most important clients. For example, if you’re a marketing manager or product manager in your organization, it’s likely that you have replaced someone who held the job before you and is no longer with your firm. Would it be valuable to find out what your predecessor promised your clients? Would it be valuable to have access to your old e-mail so that you could find out what you told people and what they told you? One of our clients, for example, uses their archiving system as way for traveling employees to have access to all of their old e-mail while on the road, providing them with a permanent record they can search easily when they need to do so.

In short, an archive is an incredibly valuable record of your business dealings, a record that you should probably keep and for which you should provide access to your employees. Others value it highly – you should too.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.