Research shows high level of dissatisfaction with current digital archiving capabilities combined with unnecessarily low expectations

Watford , 30 January 2006: A surprisingly high number of IT directors remain dissatisfied with their digital archiving capabilities and are pessimistic about improving the situation, according to new research from records compliance management leader AXS-One. The findings indicate that many UK organisations are missing important opportunities to reduce the costs and the risk associated with retaining and managing electronic records, and are in greater danger than necessary of losing customers due to poor service.

Based on interviews with 100 UK IT directors, the research found that nearly half (47 percent) of those sampled are dissatisfied with their current digital archiving capabilities, and identified several causes for this level of dissatisfaction:

• Only five percent of organisations believe that they currently have the capability of retrieving from archive 100 per cent of their electronic output (including email, IM, documents, spreadsheets, databases and ERP data) at an acceptable cost.
• 85 percent of the sample does not believe it is practical to archive all digital content, significantly underestimating what can be achieved by today's digital archiving technology.
• 76 percent of those questioned believe it is “inevitable” that their company will lose a proportion of digital files, potentially putting them on a collision course with regulators and putting customer relationships at unnecessary risk. Recent research commissioned by AXS-One* has shown that the inability to retrieve customer records would cause up to 20 percent of customers to switch brands .

“The dissatisfaction expressed with current digital archiving capabilities in AXS-One's IT director research is clearly linked to outdated expectations”, commented Mark Donkersley, Managing Director at AXS-One Europe.

“There is a general misconception that digital archive and retrieval cannot handle the volume and variety of data currently being produced by organisations. In fact many companies have already built archives capable of capturing all digital content types and are saving money as a result of more efficient data management, as well as benefiting from big improvements in corporate governance and customer satisfaction. IT strategists need to be more demanding in their expectations.”

Other findings from the research include:

• 48 percent of the sample currently archive less than half of their digital output.
• Despite stringent regulations on data retention in the financial services industry, the number of organisations in the sector archiving all digital data is just six per cent. And in the less regulated industries, zero per cent of manufacturing companies believe this is possible, with four per cent of retail, distribution and transport companies taking this view.
• 59 per cent of organisations deem it acceptable not to archive Instant Messages, despite the adoption of IM as an important new business communication tool.

According to Mark Donkersley, “Technology is not the barrier to solving the digital archiving issue, nor is cost of deployment. These systems usually pay for themselves through storage infrastructure savings - we expect to cut capacity requirements by about 50 percent - and staff productivity gains, which on a very conservative estimate liberate about 50 working hours per employee per year just on email management.

“The issue seems to be one of imagination and will power. AXS-One's research shows that many IT strategists have not yet engaged with the possibility of archiving all structured and unstructured data. The IT industry has to take its share of the blame too for not getting the message across that this pessimism is redundant and the perceived difficulties are in fact yesterday's problem.”

Ends

About AXS-One

AXS-One Inc. (AMEX: AXO) is a leading provider of high performance Records Compliance Management solutions. The AXS-One Compliance Platform enables organisations to implement secure, scalable and enforceable policies that address records management for corporate governance, legal discovery and industry regulations such as SEC17a-4, NASD 3010, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, The Patriot Act and Gramm-Leach Bliley. AXS-One's award-winning technology has been critically acclaimed as best of class and delivers digital archiving, business process management, electronic document delivery and integrated records disposition and discovery for e-mail, instant messaging, images, SAP and other corporate records. Founded in 1979, and headquartered in Rutherford , NJ , AXS-One has offices worldwide including in the United States , Australia , Singapore , United Kingdom and South Africa . For further information, visit the AXS-One web site at http://www.axsone.com .

AXS-One, the AXS-One logo, "Access Tomorrow Today," AXSPoint, and TransAXS are registered trademarks of, and AXS-One Compliance Platform, AXS-One Retention Manager, "The Records Compliance Management Company," e-Cellerator, AXS Desk, "AXS-One Collaboration FrameWorks," SMART, AXS-Link and Tivity are trademarks of, AXS-One Inc., in the U.S. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies

For more information, please contact:

Ruth Jones / Sean Gough
Lighthouse PR
+44 (0)20 7494 6570
rjones@lighthousepr.com / sgough@lighthousepr.com

Based on sample of 1,000 UK adults. Issued in press release dated 29 November 2005: “Companies flirting with brand disaster”.