Why an HR Services and Payroll Company Eliminated its EAS Archive

Company Overview

Our customer provides accounting, tax, insurance, and HR services across the United States with over 100 offices, almost 5000 employees, and close to 100,000 customers. In addition to complying with high levels of industry-specific regulations for data retention and privacy, they must be able to respond quickly and accurately to requests from their legal team for specific data.

The Objective

The customer had been using EAS (Enterprise Archive Solution) for many years but found the outdated system was impacting its ability to manage data effectively. With EAS no longer being developed and vendor support hard to come by, the company required a new solution that not only enabled fast, accurate searches to be carried out in response to subpoenas or legal investigations, but one that would help future-proof the business.

The Challenge

During searches, the aging EAS system would regularly stop working and require servers to be rebooted and services to be restarted before access to data could be regained. Such issues caused stress within the company’s IT department and often led to delays in providing information to legal teams. The company feared that further issues would arise and that the next reboot might not be successful, putting the company’s archived data and regulatory compliance at risk.

Because of the varied nature of the company’s work in the financial sector, including retirement services and benefits, select records are required to be stored for as long as 7 years, meaning any loss of information could subject the company to regulatory fines and penalties. To avoid that risk and eliminate costly software maintenance, support, and infrastructure required to support the legacy system, the customer sought a more modern solution.

The Solution

Using its own migration IP to provide the highest possible performance and extraction accuracy, Archive360 migrated the legacy EAS archive to the customer’s own cloud tenant and implemented a live journaling cabinet for ongoing email retention. The customer migrated more than 50 terabytes of data into Azure and uses Archive2Azure(TM) to monitor and search that information.

Using multiple connections directly into the data, Archive360 bypassed the API providing a far faster and safer migration than traditional tools. Accessing the legacy archive’s storage layer ensured extraction could be sped up and  faster than conventional migration options and ensured that no data is lost in the process.

Having considered several third-party suppliers, the company ultimately chose Archive360 for its journaling expertise and eDiscovery capabilities. Now, Archive360 provides the customer with the peace of mind that records are always retained

The Results

The legacy EAS solution has now been decommissioned, legacy data has been migrated to Azure and is managed in the Archive2Azure platform which will handle all of the company’s journaled data going forward.

Using Archive360, the IT team can now search, download, and compile journaled data efficiently without risk of system slowdowns or crashes delaying the delivery of information to the legal department. Because data is now retained and managed in the company’s own Azure tenancy in its native format, there’s also no risk of future vendor lock-in issues.

By comparison to the old way of working, the company has been impressed with the performance of Archive360’s solution and is pleased to no longer rely on its legacy archive.

“The difference between our legacy solution and Archive360 is night and day,” says the Director of IT Infrastructure. “It allows my team to do their jobs without worrying about the stability of the system. It’s more accurate, flexible, and helps us stay compliant, which is crucial for our business.”

The company has also benefitted from a close relationship with Archive360 by comparison to other providers. Now, rather than chasing vendors that often don’t reply within their specified 24-hour response period, the company is in close contact with Archive360 and has seen requested features implemented in new Archive360 builds as a result.

Enjoying cost savings, the potential to access crucial data insight, and ongoing compliance with strict industry regulations, the company is now looking to extend its use of Archive360’s solution. With improved search accuracy and improved flexibility, it is considering taking advantage Archive360 for searches across OneDrive data, as well as providing ad hoc access to stored information for the legal department.  The agility of Archive360’s solution means this can be achieved quickly and could save the customer valuable time, enhancing the way teams within the company interact.