The Recession Is Over!

Yeah yeah, I know this is still being debated. I waited for awhile to post after reading this as just like everyone, has their doubts regarding if this is true or not, did the cash for clunkers create an artificial high, did the expired, soon to be expanded $8000 homebuyer credit contribute, etc.

At Procedo we have weathered through this past 12 months just like everyone. Being impacted in at least one way or another during that time. However, we are seeing the activity levels or real deals starting to increase. What is interesting is that during the time we never really saw a dip in our activity, but what we are seeing now is an increase of deals starting to close. The shear volume of deals increasing, but more importantly, real deals that have been on the radar for some time with our clients preparing for them are starting to close as well.

We're seeing more of the "want to get done" deals happening vs. just the "need to get done."

What we're also seeing, is the continued need and drive towards archive improvements. As many of our partners have indicated over the years, archiving is continuing to be an integral part of the organization and is no longer just a want. Companies are realizing the vast benefits of archiving. What we are starting to see a major trend with is not just archiving, but companies demanding more from their archives and therefore an increase in migrations from one archiving platform to another.

We're excited to be partnered with so many leading providers in the archiving space and working with them bring new customers to their platform through competitive archive migrations.

Users, do they really matter?

I've been working in the world of providing IT solutions for over 15 years now in various capacities. However, the one thing that has never changed from any role I've been involved with is that there are "users" we all need to deal with. From my consulting days, "user" was just another four letter word. Anyone who has ever consulted dreaded hearing that "a user called and is having a problem." Especially if it was right after an upgrade or a major system change.

In the world of archiving, the user seems to be forgotten when we speak to a lot of our potential clients, until the user calls...

So what about the user in archiving, do they really matter? Is the users input really important in selecting an archive? Does it really matter how easy it is for the user to get access to their archived content?

Obviously, the simple answer is yes, they do. The more complex answer is, "yes they matter and even more important, their experiences should be positive and as non-impacting to the way they use their email/archive."

Shortcutting objects in the archive in Exchange became the standard, because it provided users with virtually the same way to access their data as if it was in Exchange. So what happens when the company migrates their archived content from one application to another? So what happens when the shortcuts are now different and they don't function like they are supposed to, or they look different than new shortcuts, or you can't click on them the same way you can new shortcuts? Does it really matter? Does it really matter that the user experience is now negative with the new multi-million dollar archive system you just deployed?

Do users really matter? maybe, maybe not. Go ahead, disrupt their environment, you'll find out soon enough. When migrating, make sure you provide them a positive experience. If not, they will blame the new archive - not the old one you just migrated from.

Archiving, No Longer a Want

In the current economy many people are scaling back on all forms of spending. Our world's spending habits have changed from wants and desires to focusing only on needs. This is clear across not only personal spending habits but corporate purchases as well. Large "non-essential" purchases have been delayed if not cancelled all together.

Keeping this in mind, we're seeing a really interesting trend in archive deployments and archive spending. Our first quarter of 2009 saw an increase of opportunities of over 300% over the same quarter a year ago and 250% over the 4th quarter of 2009. Already only 15 days into Q2 we've already seen more inquiries this quarter than we did in the same quarter of 2008, which puts us on pace to a 200% increase over Q1 2009.

These statistics and trends that we are seeing along with what our partners are seeing, is that archiving has moved beyond a want in corporate data centers. Clearly the benefits of archiving and storage efficiencies that come with it are being defined as a need across all verticals.

Another trend that shows that migrations are a large part of this is we had many application vendors reach out to us in the first quarter of this year to add support for their applications to PAMM. Look for some of these announcements throughout the rest of this quarter as our solutions become integrated.

Archiving is now critical to almost every organization, ensure you perform proper due diligence in selecting your new archive for the solution that best fits your needs and look to PAMM to help you get there.