Last month I outlined the reasons why IT organizations should consider eliminating certain applications. The savings in terms of redirecting hardware, software maintenance licenses and full time equivalents (FTE) with specialized skill sets to other more critical projects can be significant. I also noted that all these benefits can be achieved so long as you can continue to retain and access the data easily and cost-effectively for compliance and reporting purposes.

A question that might linger in your mind is how much cost savings can you really achieve if you retire the data but still retain it in a database, with its associated maintenance cost? But what if you had the option to store your data at a fraction of its original size on common file systems, with full audit-ability, built-in retention management, while still maintaining on demand query access for your business users? The resulting savings could be so significant that application retirement might not only be an option, but an overwhelmingly compelling initiative that must be implemented.

Informatica Data Archive is different from other archiving solutions because it provides you with exactly that option – archiving to a highly optimized, immutable, secure, and compressed file format. It also yields up to 98% compression, thereby reducing your storage capacity footprint dramatically. At the same time, you can still access and report against your archived data from any reporting or Business Intelligence tool, as though it is still stored in traditional relational databases. The optimized file-based archive format accomplishes all this without the burden of specialized administration or expensive high performance hardware.

Informatica customer, Adelphia was able to shut down their legacy financial, treasury, and franchise legal application by using Informatica Data Archive to retire the data. They then use standard ODBC/JDBC interfaces to query the Informatica file-based archive and deliver the necessary application data to their business users on demand. They were able to retain all of the data and maintain access through inexpensive server and storage infrastructure, with 5% of the original database size and 5% of the staff time required to maintain the original application. The resulting ROI of 211% speaks for itself.

When you are considering application rationalization and decommissioning, remember to look for a solution that offers the unique capabilities to:

· Dramatically compress the archived data size (between 20:1-60:1 compression ratio)

· Ensure data immutability, with built-in retention management

· Maintain easy access to the archived data from any standard reporting or business intelligence tool