Google debuts "Vault" Archiving and Records Management System

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Google debuts "Vault" Archiving and Records Management System

It seems like everything is moving to the cloud and with the advent of the Google Vault, business communications are headed there as well. The company recently announced its archiving service for users of its chat and email services. This service costs $5 per month and is geared toward any organization that might benefit from an archiving system during times of litigation, investigation, and compliance audits. We think it's a strong addition to the company's other business services, which you may already be using, including Cloud Connect, Groups, Sites and Docs.

Water cooler talk has been positive. If you already rely on Gchat or Gmail don't need to make any changes. This records management system simply archives the data that is already being communicated in those channels. It offers an easy solution during a difficult time. Legal processes that require a retention period, or hold, on such data go that much more smoothly when it's easy to locate and save that data.

Google explains that its Vault service allows businesses to comply with those legal holds and the system will hold the chat and email data until the retention expires. Although you can manually save some of this data, the automated records management system ensures that it is preserved for longer than Gmail or Chat may usually allow.

Even when litigation and compliance aren't an issue, this new service allows small company owners to quickly search through archived data to find specific information. The search tool is handy because it allows you to locate data based on message content and meta-data such as labels. It also promotes collaboration between users for message management purposes. Plus, there's no need to move your sensitive files between hard-drives, a practice that can sometimes result in corrupted files. This new service is just one more way to ensure that important information never becomes lost, even in the event of a hard-drive or network failure.

Google wants business owners and IT managers to sign up with this service right away. What is its reasoning? Vault provides an easy-to-access method for quickly finding data. The archiving service is a small fee, the company says, especially when compared to costly data retrieval and wasted man-hours when the auditor makes an appearance. Operations quickly return to normal, and audits become less painful. It's certainly a convincing argument and we think it's always better to be safe than sorry.