For thousands of years, tools have played a key role in the development of society. Tools improve the quality of life, make hard tasks easy, change the tide of war and, in many cases, have completely changed the world. At Micro Focus, we are excited to be a part of the development of today’s most important of tools, software!
Software: Today’s Most Important Tools
The Software Alliance (BSA), in a study on the economic impact of software on the U.S. economy, found that the total value-added GDP of software was 1.07 trillion dollars! This shows the incredible growth of the software industry, and just how important it has become. Think about just your own company: I’d bet you can think of at least a dozen software programs that are used daily and that are critical to your business operations.
Measuring Software by ROI
The value of software lies in the ROI that it provides. Like any tool, it is purchased with hopes that it will either save businesses money or make them more profitable – and it does! There’s a reason the industry is so big. It changes everything. The challenge, then, for any company, is deciding which of the thousands of software programs are worth the investment. It all ties back to the ROI, and answering the question, Which software will add the most value?
Some software programs have such obvious advantages that they are used by nearly every business and are completely necessary in order to be competitive and effective. Examples of these include email and communication software, word processing applications, Internet browsers, CRMs, etc. Companies don’t think twice about purchasing these because they know the value that they bring and because they have been tested and proven. Successful companies, however, always look for a competitive advantage. New software programs can give them that edge they are looking for.
The ROI of Archiving 2.0
At Micro Focus, we realize this, and design our products accordingly. A huge ROI in archiving software lies in the management of information. In the past, email systems were efficient in managing and storing this data. Now, with the internet growing at astronomical rates (according to Gartner there will be 27,445 exabytes of data by 2020, – and to put this in perspective, Google has about one exabyte of data!) systems that are not dedicated to the management of this information simply won’t be able to keep up. Retain Unified Archiving by Micro Focus can. However, our vision with Retain is to become much more than a backup and storage space that makes this information available in case of litigation or eDiscovery – although it does add great value in these areas. From a larger perspective, Archiving 2.0 is all about managing the numerous channels of communication in a business and becoming a source of information that will be referred to daily in order to make more informed and strategic business decisions. Allow our friends at InfoTech Research Group explain what Archiving 2.0 is all about.
Imagine all of the data that is slipping through the cracks in any organization! Effectively monitoring all of these communications will provide great insights. For example, the head of HR could learn from the tone, frequency, and length of communications between employees in order to best suit their needs, and make strategic improvements to operations. Communication between customers and sales could be monitored for “buzz-words” that give insight into what is effective, and what customers are excited about. With such vast amounts of information that exist, the possibilities are very exciting.
This is where archiving is headed, and we are excited to be at the forefront making it happen.
We’d love for you to see the ROI that Retain can provide for you!
