Veritas launches document storage management software

Veritas Software Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., has released software that will help agencies automatically file and dispose of electronic documents.Veritas’ Data Lifecycle Manager version 5.0 lets managers establish routines to archive or delete documents including e-mail, images and word processor files, said Jeff Lundberg, a senior product marketing manager for Veritas.“Essentially, if it is an electronic document or data object, we can move it through tiers of storage over time,” he said. The software scans directories and archives and determines, using rules set by an administrator, which files should be moved to other storage facilities. Through the manager console, the systems administrator sets up rules about where the software should look for files, what criteria it should use to sort files and where the files should be archived.The archives themselves can be placed on a wide variety of storage devices such as magnetic tape, optical disk jukeboxes or storage area networks. The company uses third-party interfaces drawn from relationships it has established with hardware manufacturers, Lundberg said. Veritas offers a number of software-based storage management applications. This version of the software is an update of Veritas’ previous offering, Storage Migrator for Windows, which offered basic automated archiving capabilities. This version can set more complex rules, Lundberg said. It also offers archive searching and the ability to synchronize with Active Directory identification management software from Microsoft Corp.The Veritas software can work in conjunction with the company’s NetBackup and Backup Exec software or by itself. Software for a single server runs about $5,000. A smaller organization may pay about $10,000 to $15,000 for a full implementation, while a larger enterprise implementation running on about five servers would cost about $20,000, Lundberg said.