IBM unveils regulatory compliance retention system

Computerworld - IBM today unveiled an integrated storage and server system designed to help companies capture and preserve electronic documents needed to meet government and industry regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The IBM TotalStorage Data Retention 450 combines storage, server and software retention components in a single, securable cabinet. The system, which will begin shipping next month, starts at $141,600 for a 3.5TB configuration and can scale up to 56TB of storage.
The system is centered on IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager for Data Retention, a software package aimed at helping customers protect the integrity of data as well as automatically enforce data retention policies. Using policy-based management, data in the TotalStorage system can be stored indefinitely or set to expire on a predetermined date.
In addition, the software can also confirm that data has been written correctly and ensure that no modifications or deletions are made after it is stored.
"The problem that customers have is that they need to retain data for a period of time and protect it," regardless of whether it's structured or unstructured data, said Alan Stuart, chief strategist for IBM Compliance and Data Retention Solutions in White Plains, N.Y.
The Tivoli Storage Manager for Data Retention is embedded on an IBM eServer p615 using Power 4+ processors, "something with a little more oomph than Intel processors," said Stuart. The system runs on a variety of platforms, including Sun Solaris, HP-UX and Microsoft Windows, said Stewart.
The system supports IBM's TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592, as well as its Linear Tape Open family of tape products. In addition, upcoming support for IBM's WORM media technology for the IBM TotalStorage 3592 will provide media-encoded nonrewriteability and nonerasability. Those abilities will be of particular interest to Wall Street firms that have to store large quantities of electronic records under the Security and Exchange Commission's SEC 17a-4 rule, which requires exchange members, brokers and dealers to capture and maintain a log of all electronic communications for at least six years.
IBM "has been in records management since the 1970s, but this is the first time I've seen them bring together a cohesive document management solution," said Jack Scott, a partner at The Evaluator Group Inc., a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based storage management consultant. Scott said IBM and EMC Corp. are the two leaders in the regulatory compliance document management market.

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