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Alan Pelz-Sharpe

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XAM your ECM RFP

13-Jul-2009

Tags: Document Management (ECM), E-mail Archiving and Management, Industry Standards, Selecting Technology

One standard/specification that gets little attention in the ECM world is XAM, yet it is a specification that is set to have a fairly profound impact on the long-term archiving of content. I confess it is also one that long went under my radar, so I thought it worth writing a blog post to share my thoughts on it and let others who are unaware of it get in the loop.

XAM (eXtensible Access Method) is a specification developed by SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association), and has been around in its first version for just over a year. Its goal is simple: to ensure that content can be archived for long periods of time in a storage disk environment. At first sight you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a goal that was achieved long ago, surely if you move an item of content to a disk it will sit there for ever if need be? Well sort of, and then again no, not really. I have personal experience of working with firms that have found this out first-hand, and at a cost. In the most extreme example I can recall, a highly regulated firm had terabytes of content archived, going back over a period of many years - yet virtually all of it was inaccessible - they only kept it to prove they had it, should a regulator call and ask. Thankfully the regulator never asked to see the content retrieved and put to use, for if one had done so this particular firm would have been in very serious trouble.

The problem that firms face when required to archive content for long periods (for example 10 years or more), is that over that period of time applications change, formats change, storage technology evolves. In addition, throughout this period there is typically a need to move archived content from one location to another, to reduce costs or to increase performance (online to nearline to offline for example). What with all this going on a disconnect occurs at some point, and though the raw content data moves, the metadata and logic to access and utilize it gets lost or broken. The content, whilst taking up disk space, becomes inaccessible and unreadable.

The key reason for this is that storage disk technology was built for transactional/structured data types and as that is by definition transactional in nature, and highly structured, it is relatively simple to move it effectively from one storage location to another. Unstructured data ("content" as we like to call it) works very differently: it exists in a myriad of formats and structures, can typically be accessed only by particular applications and relates in turn to historical, retention and access data.

XAM cannot resolve all of these issues, but what it can do is provide a standardized method for storage systems (particularly those focused on long term archiving) and archive related applications (such as RM or ECM systems) to talk to one another. This ensures that at some level, if not all levels, content can move between devices over the long term and that it remains readable and accessible by any XAM compliant application.

As XAM is actively supported by all the storage vendors in today's market (at least, I am a not aware of any exceptions), it should have a good chance of success. However for this important initiative to really succeed, it requires buyers to demand that their archival applications (ECM, DAM, WCM systems etc.) also be XAM compliant, and so far the number of applications that are remains small. For this to succeed there needs to be equal weight given to both elements of the equation, storage devices and the applications. I am all for standards, just as I am all for methodologies. I am a big believer that doing something in a structured manner, at the very least, delivers consistency.

As such, I would recommend you add XAM to the list of specifications and standards you list on RFPs that go to content technology providers. An XAM-compliant product will not in an of itself resolve your archiving issues, but its at least a step in the right direction. That alone is something.