Data Matters Partners With Hitachi Vantara to Boost Competitive Advantage With Strongroom, a Cloud Vault for Content Archiving

Overview

Challenge

• Help customers ensure data remains available and accessible for decades to come.

Solution

• Launch new cloud content archiving solution that is cost-effective and compliant.

Outcome

• Boosts competitive advantage.
• Facilitates deeper customer relationships.
• Promotes ongoing growth and revenue generation.

Challenge

Safeguard the Accessibility of Data for Decades To Come

From architectural drawings to company accounts, data needs to be accessible years after its initial use. Storing digital data over a long period of time, however, can become both complex and costly.

“Content archiving provides organizations with a cost-effective way of ensuring that data is available, secured and accessible,” comments the Founder of Data Matters, Paul Schindeler.

“We cannot predict how data will be captured or formatted in 50 years, so it’s important that it’s archived in a sustainable way at the outset.”

Founded in 2001, Data Matters provides sustainable archiving and information management solutions to hundreds of enterprises and government organizations in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Data Matters supplements its internal team of around a dozen data experts with an ecosystem of partners, such as legal firms, database specialists and change managers, to provide a range of value-added services to its customers.

In 2017, Schindeler decided to add a new offering to the company’s portfolio: cloud content archiving. “As the volume of digital data grows, organizations need a next-generation solution that is both cost-effective and compliant,” he explains. “By adopting a cloud-based approach, organizations don’t have to build and maintain their own storage infrastructure. They can also scale their usage up and down as needed.”

Data Matters wanted to build a solution that was founded on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) – the gold standard for archiving digital assets developed by NASA.

Solution

Compliant and Cost-Effective Archiving in the Cloud

Data Matters has a long-standing partnership with Hitachi Vantara, as Schindeler explains: “With Hitachi Vantara solutions, we don’t need to worry about reliability or scalability. This means we can focus on value-added elements, such as data searchability and accessibility.”

Working in partnership, the two companies created an entirely new brand and an entirely new offering for cloud content archiving: Strongroom. With Hitachi Content Platform as its foundation, Strongroom protects data from any harmful external influences while ensuring it remains fully accessible for decades to come.

“When archiving digital data, you need to store more than just the actual content. You also need to capture metadata and context,” comments Schindeler. “With Hitachi Content Platform, we can ingest, archive, administer and manage digital data easily and effectively. It maps really well to the OAIS model.”

By integrating Hitachi Content Platform with SEAL (an information governance, archiving and records management platform from Star Storage), they can provide customers with self-service access to their archived content via a simple online interface. Around 250TB of customer content is currently archived via Strongroom, but Schindeler expects this to increase significantly as the solution grows both in capacity and capability.

“We are working with Hitachi to add new features, such as data intelligence, to Strongroom,” adds Schindeler. “This will enable our customers to tap into insightful analytics and unlock greater value from their historical data.”

Outcomes

Greater Competitive Advantage and Stronger Customer Relationships

By leveraging its partnership with Hitachi Vantara, Data Matters has been able to bring a unique cloud content archiving solution to market in the Netherlands and Belgium. Since its launch in mid-2017, more than 400 customers have signed up to Strongroom, which is ISO-certified.

“Strongroom increases our competitive advantage,” confirms Schindeler. “It enables us to provide our customers with an efficient, secure and compliant platform for archiving their data in Europe.”

With both Hitachi Content Platform and Strongroom based on a “pay-as-you-go” cost model, the new cloud content archiving solution is economical for both Data Matters and its hundreds of customers.

“Our customers trust Hitachi Vantara, and they trust Strongroom,” comments Schindeler. “Instead of selling a one-off solution, we are now providing an ongoing service. This enables us to build deeper and longer customer relationships where we are not just a supplier, but a strategic advisor for information management.”

For more information on Strongroom visit: www.datamatters.nl/strongroom