An insiders view on managing a data archiving project

We chat to Andrew Crouch from AVIVA about his experiences of implementing a data archiving solution:

Can you start by telling us a little about how the data archiving project first came about?

Back in 2000 the NUI (Norwich Union Insurance) claims and workflow systems had been running on the current platform for 7 years and policy for 2 years. The Capacity Management team began to have concerns about the levels of data growth and the cost of a serious system failure to a rapidly increasing user base. This kick-started the project with problem definition and research of options being undertaken.

You say that the levels of data within NUI were growing at that time, what were the main drivers for that growth?

Data from legacy systems was converting to the new platform, this was also the period that Norwich Union was merging with CGU. The user base was increasing and with it the need for greater availability. The whole business was starting to move to where it is today.

What sort of pressures were IT facing from around the business with regards to the growing data volumes?

The business weren’t experiencing any issues as a result of the increased data at that time. The Capacity Management team could see problems on the horizon so the pressure was convincing the business that action was required. We were a bit ahead of the game.