Accounting

Though they will likely never face - or deserve - the intense scrutiny given Enron or WorldCom, most companies have made complying with governmental requirements a top business priority. Yet, for many businesses - and the accountants, lawyers and others in charge of their companies' compliance initiatives - meeting that objective continues to be a major challenge.

In fact, a survey released in December 2006 by the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) found that despite years of effort and millions of dollars of investment, only 26 percent of companies said that their Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance processes were fully implemented*. In other words, only about one in four companies felt that they were "SOX-ready."

Although different agencies impose different requirements, government compliance can require that relevant documents be:

A company that fails to meet these essential requirements may risk significant fines - and in some cases, public scandal. Bottom line: No matter how large or small, companies should make sure their records are easily accessible and retrievable.

The only practical answer is electronic storage. As the accountants and attorneys who have successfully implemented the compliance process are increasingly discovering, automating the process as quickly as possible helps to make the task easier.

"To comply with government requirements, companies generally adopt new technology and procedures on how to use it," said Greg White, Dell's storage brand manager for small and medium businesses. "Using technology can simplify the storage and retrieval of documents and help companies comply with government regulations. And, thanks to new developments, the costs of storing and retrieving data are dropping."

Governmental regulations are complex and intimidating. But complying with them doesn't need to be - if companies get help from experienced vendors. The total package to aid in compliance combines hardware, software, service and support to give companies an integrated, cost-effective, easy-to-implement and easy-to-manage data archiving solution.

These solutions are available from companies like Plasmon^TM  and EMC, which partner with Dell to deliver a complete package to small businesses. The advantage of working with experienced partners is that it can reduce costs for small companies and utilizes the partners' past work. These companies, for example, have already helped customers develop processes for archiving Microsoft Exchange messaging data, financial and employee records, x-rays and health histories - all documents that companies are or may be required to archive pursuant to various regulations.

But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to data storage. Small businesses need to store and retrieve data for different purposes and regulatory compliance. That means companies must deploy solutions specific to their needs, and the options to consider are significant.

To help protect the business and act within government requirements, small companies should capture and store records exactly as they are created. To that end, these companies must create an unaltered data archive. Some data storage systems available in the market are designed for long-term, online archiving of fixed content or unalterable data. Through a Content Addressed Storage system (CAS), these storage solutions "tag" each record with a unique content address that enables easy online retrieval while preserving the authenticity of the data. Additional add-on software modules optimize the content addressed storage system and help regulated industries easily manage data stored with various applications. These storage systems also offer additional flexibility, like automated, policy-based data migration to storage servers that are designed not to interfere with a company's business, while maintaining transparent user access.

Offices that must store massive amounts of data may want to consider other media options as well. Tape and disk storage media can be altered, but optical Write Once Read Many (WORM) media cannot be rewritten or erased. This is critical for many organizations that require permanent records. Another option may be Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology, which is an "open format" technology that means the users will have multiple sources of product and media.

E-mail is one of the fastest growing categories of data critical to companies' operations and communications. It also represents an enormous and growing storage and backup challenge. Small business owners should look for solutions that automatically move data off the e-mail message server and into a storage system. These storage systems archive automatically to lighten the load on email servers. And, they can simultaneously monitor e-mail content to facilitate compliance with government regulations and corporate policies.

Regulatory guidelines in the U.S. are changing the way small businesses deal with their data. Lack of understanding and resources for planning are some of the roadblocks faced by small businesses when dealing with regulatory compliance demands.

Ultimately, different companies face different storage and backup challenges. But, done correctly and with the right solution, effective archival systems can help eliminate the pain of storing and retrieving documents and other data - freeing companies to create them.

For more information on storage, please visit www.dell.com/storage.