If you are amazed with technology today, you should know that the speed of technological advances have been hindered for many years by many factors.

Things like copyright laws, marketing and corporate profits often constrain the speed of new products and innovations. We as a collective human race can develop and advance much faster if these obstacles are to be removed. The counter-force to these constraints have come through the “Open Source” community with Linux and other operating systems and open source standards, hobbyist, enthusiasts and hackers (ethical and unethical) has brought to us great benefits and/or improvements to the devices we all love so much. With these leaps in technology and advancements comes a new technology inhibitor… Increased Regulations and Compliance.

From the days of the Enron scandals to the insider trading of Martha Stewart, a number of regulatory rules and compliance has come down on businesses. Some examples of these rules and regulations are the Sarbanes Oxley or (SOX) Act, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act) are just to name a few.

These compliance rules do not directly inhibit innovations and advancements in technology, but it does slow it down. It forces technology to stay around longer than it is intended for. It “shifts” innovations to data preservation and accessibility. Regulations that span many years like in the financial sector are typically 7 years worth of unaltered and verifiable financial data. There is now the possibility of expanding it to 10 years or more. The medical industry is moving to retention of 50+ years of unaltered and verifiable record keeping. The portability of medical history is now driving retentions to exceed the life of a person; in some cases 100+ years, depending on the medical treatment type. Finally, there are the data “packrats”. Although they may not be mandated by regulations yet, some institutions’ self-imposed retentions to “forever”.
Reality? Yes and No.

Yes, that we can set these rules today, but the reality is No… at least not proven yet. It is a work in progress. There are some innovative products that are designed to keep data past 100+ years, but most companies’ IT departments are not looking that far ahead. They are not looking to spend lots of money on unproven technology on the prospect of being able to keep the data that long. They have more immediate issues to solve. So companies are faced with the challenge of keeping up with innovations and leading-edge technologies while being able to support data retention compliance. Much of that data is on old tapes, optical platters and old disk storage systems.

Fortunately, there are the aftermarket niche resellers that specialized in repurposed gear. These business provide an essential service to these unique situations. Companies are making their storage subsystems last longer, usually past the vendor’s EOL (End of Life) support of the products. Some are resorting to eBay and user groups to fulfill the hard to find items, but to varying degree of success. One IT manager says, “When I buy my stuff from eBay for my workplace, I am playing Russian roulette. I prefer to go to these niche resellers because I know what I am getting and it’s not from some guy in a garage somewhere.” EOL disks in archival systems with compliance metadata, older servers with specific BIOS support for older drives, SANs with EOL disks with specific interface or firmware are generating a steady demand for these components, but until it hurts enough for companies to invest in a ultra-long term archival/compliance ready solutions, companies will endure the pain and resort to leveraging older equipment to preserve their data.