Monday, February 17, 2020

Pros and Cons of managing in-house web archives

Web archiving has become a necessity in today’s fickle digital world. Many vendors offer good web archiving services to companies. But all these services come at a cost which companies plan to save. Thus, many companies have started building in-house archiving solutions for their businesses.


Building such a complex system requires a lot of skill, time, and money. If the companies don’t invest wisely the in-house archiving solution is bound to fail. This can be catastrophic for a business. Before going ahead with an in-house system, let us understand its pros and cons for better clarity.

Pros of in-house web archives

There are certain advantages to building a team that handles web archiving tasks for your business. Some of these are:

1. Existing resources: The IT department works more closely with technology. Your company can use these existing resources in designing a web archiving solution. This saves the company’s initial investment cost.

2. Complete control: By building an in-house archival solution, the company knows which data is stored. Customization and automation become easy to implement. You have complete freedom with the choice of method and frequency for archiving your data.

3. Data access: Your company’s data contains sensitive information like future projects, trade secrets, customer deals, etc. You wouldn’t want any third-party to access this data. With an in-house tool, you can provide data access on a need-to-know basis.

Cons of in-house web archives

Most of the companies have their in-house IT department. To save cost and investment money companies most of the time assign the task of web archiving to the IT department. But, there are certain drawbacks of in-house web archives:

1. Lack of experience: The IT department doesn’t have the required experience to handle web archiving. Thus, managing the archives, resources, and responsibilities become tough for them. Even though they are able to come up with a solution, it isn’t meeting the benchmark most of the time.

2. Investment: Having an in-house web archiving team that has less experience and a low skill set, leads to more investment over time. Your company will end up spending more money on designing, validating, and implementing the archiving solution. The maintenance of the archives also requires time and resources which your company has to invest in.

3. Content management systems: Companies mistakenly consider CMS systems as a web archival solution. Firstly, it isn’t a long-term solution. Secondly, it is a backup method instead of a functional archive. And lastly, it doesn’t store all the information from your website. This would be a risky bet for your company.

By archiving the data in an in-house tool  you would be winging the archival process. For good in-house archival solutions, your company will have to build that infrastructure and invest in long-term maintenance as well. Plus, investment in training resources would be additional. It would be in the best interest of your company that a group of professionals does your job. Tools like Stillio, provide world-class web archiving services that would be beneficial for your business.

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