Resources

Research Archive

Dated research and earlier product guidance from PremCloud. These materials are historical references, not the January 2027 product guide or a statement of current availability.

Research · 2026-09-28

Give Legal AI a Prepared Matter

How Trusted Matter Builder puts Smart Stack 4.0 preparation to work for Harvey

A practical architecture and evaluation framework for turning Trusted Data Collections into bounded, approved Matter Editions for legal AI.

Research · 2026-01-06

Enterprise AI Readiness

A Strategic Framework for Data Preparation

Comprehensive analysis of enterprise AI adoption challenges and the critical role of data readiness in successful Copilot deployments. Covers Dark Data economics, the Trusted Data Portal intelligence control plane, and the GE case study with $30M savings.

Research · 2026-01-06

Precision Governance

Operationalizing Microsoft Purview for the AI Era

Strategic manifesto and technical roadmap for CISOs and CCOs addressing the Purview Paradox — how to govern exabytes of legacy data for safe AI deployment using the Trusted Data Refinery and Trusted Data Portal architecture.

Research · 2026-01-06

The Missing Intelligence Layer

Why Microsoft Copilot Needs a Data Companion to Scale from Pilot to Production

Comprehensive research establishing the Microsoft Companion category as a mandatory architectural necessity for the AI era. Covers AI failure modes, the Trusted Data Portal with Elasticsearch, Nextcloud, and MCP, cost analysis, and ROI validation.

Research · 2026-04-12

The Enterprise File Estate Crisis

Why Unstructured Data Governance Is the Most Urgent AI Readiness Problem

Comprehensive examination of the enterprise file estate crisis: where unstructured data lives across Windows File Shares, SharePoint, and OneDrive, what it contains, why cloud migration did not solve the problem, and how the Trusted Data Refinery addresses it at enterprise scale.

Research · 2026-05-15

Governed MCP for Enterprise AI

How Smart Stack 4.0 Turns the Model Context Protocol into a Trusted Data Control Plane

MCP is the universal connector for AI. Generic MCP connects models to chaos. Governed MCP, powered by the Trusted Data Portal, connects models to provenance-rich, policy-aware enterprise truth across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Research · 2026-05-23

Why Your AI Agents Are Failing

And Why the Model Is Not the Problem

Enterprise agents fail at scale because of the infrastructure beneath them, not the intelligence within them. This research deconstructs the four-layer agentic stack, exposes Untrusted Data as the silent agent killer, and shows how Smart Stack 3.0 turns the Microsoft data estate into production-grade fuel for AI.

Research · 2026-06-08

Smart Stack 4.0 + Microsoft IQ

The Trusted Data Foundation Behind the Agent Economy

Microsoft IQ creates intelligence across Fabric, Work, Foundry, and Web. Smart Stack 3.0 creates the trusted data foundation those intelligence layers depend on. This research paper maps how the Trusted Data Refinery, Trusted Data Memory, and Trusted Data Portal strengthen every Microsoft IQ layer for the agent economy.

Research · 2026-07-17

The Enterprise Intelligence Layer

Making Agentic Resource Discovery Trustworthy, Governed, and AI-Ready

Agentic Resource Discovery is emerging as an open standard for how AI agents find enterprise resources. Discovery alone is not enough. Smart Stack 3.0 is the Enterprise Intelligence Layer that turns discovered resources into governed, provenance-rich, AI-ready memory across Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, and future AI ecosystems.

Research · 2026-07-16

Data Mirroring and Agentic Resource Discovery

How Smart Stack 4.0 Becomes the Trusted Enterprise Memory Layer for the Agent Economy

Data Mirroring turns Smart Stack 3.0 from a discovery platform into the semantic memory layer for enterprise AI. Curated Trusted Data Collections publish into Microsoft Fabric as Delta tables and OneLake shortcuts, giving Copilot, Data Agents, Power BI, and Spark a single governed source of truth. This paper maps that architecture to the Medallion model and explains why Data Mirroring is the foundation of Agentic Resource Discovery.

Research · 2026-07-22

The Metadata Miracle

Turning Relentlessly Growing Unstructured Data Estates into AI-Ready Trusted Data at Speed and Scale

How the Trusted Data Refinery's metadata-first architecture transforms billions of unmanaged files into a Trusted Data Estate. Visibility before disruption, understanding before action, intelligence before investment, for unlimited enterprise use including Copilot.

Research · 2026-08-05

Data Mirroring vs Data Migration

Activating Trusted Enterprise Intelligence Without a Forklift Migration

Why sequencing matters. Migration relocates the estate. Trusted Data Mirroring activates governed intelligence into Microsoft Fabric while the original systems stay authoritative. Covers the decision matrix, how mirroring works, eight business benefits, operational modes, when migration is still right, and a practical adoption path.

Research · 2026-08-11

Open-Weight AI and the Trusted Data Foundation

Why Owning the Model Is Only Half of Enterprise AI Control

Put selected open-weight models to work with trusted enterprise information and optional Intelligence Nexus infrastructure. This paper explains model choice, the Smart Stack 3.0 working model, validated access controls, and the implications for cost, sovereignty, and provider independence.

Research · 2026-08-16

Trusted Data for Higher Education and Research

Preparing the Institutional Data Foundation for Security, AI, and Innovation

Research universities are federated data enterprises. This paper maps the structural gaps in a decentralized Microsoft estate, the executive mandate across IT, security, research, and AI leadership, and how Smart Stack 3.0 prepares institutional and research information for security, records obligation, cost control, and Copilot grounding.

Reference Materials

Historical Customer Accounts

These dated accounts are retained from earlier site records. Their reported results and quotations have not been independently verified for this update and do not endorse the January 2027 offering.

EY

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · December 10, 2025

The following account and quoted results are preserved from earlier site records and have not been independently verified for this update. They are not a Smart Stack 4.0 endorsement or a promise of current results.

Business Case

EY required an upgrade of its the delivery team existing archive email archive platforms supporting operations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. As a global professional services firm operating under strict regulatory, client confidentiality, and discovery obligations, EY needed to modernize its archiving and indexing infrastructure while preserving continuous access, search accuracy, and regional operational stability.

"The project ensured uninterrupted archive operations, reinforced platform stability, and positioned EY's regional archive environments on a consistent, supported release baseline. By completing the work efficiently and without disruption, EY maintained compliance readiness and operational continuity across multiple jurisdictions."
— Jeff Septoff, DPO, EY

The delivery team executed an in-place existing archive upgrade using a coordinated, region-by-region approach covering Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. The engagement included upgrading existing archive binaries, updating the IDOL platform as required, and performing unit testing to confirm end-to-end archive functionality. Testing and validation verified successful archiving, retrieval, indexing, search, and access to administrative and discovery interfaces. The project was delivered via remote services with structured milestones, documented sign-offs, and a formal project closure process, providing EY with a fully validated and inspection-ready archive environment.

Torbay Council

Government

Historical Source Record · December 3, 2025

Business Case

Torbay Council relies on our enterprise archive to support governance, continuity, and efficient information access across its public-sector operations. As the archive grew and the environment aged, the Council began experiencing slower processing, limited scalability, and challenges maintaining consistent performance during peak demand. To ensure secure, uninterrupted access to archived email while modernizing their infrastructure, Torbay Council required a seamless upgrade path that minimized operational risk and improved long-term stability.

"The team provided outstanding support throughout the upgrade process. They were highly responsive, offered clear guidance at every stage, and addressed any technical issues promptly and professionally. Walt's assistance in particular made the process straightforward and ensured a smooth experience for our team, allowing us to maintain continuity without any disruption. They also consistently look out for our best interests and provide proactive guidance."
— Tony Gilbert, Network Analyst

We worked closely with Torbay Council to modernize their existing archive environment and ensure a smooth, disruption-free upgrade. The project began with a full assessment of their existing archive infrastructure, enabling our team to identify bottlenecks, performance risks, and configuration gaps. Our engineers then executed the existing archive upgrade with strict change-control alignment, ensuring compatibility with the Council's security, retention, and operational requirements. Throughout the process, we provided clear communication, rapid technical response, and hands-on support to guide each step of the transition. In addition to the upgrade itself, we helped the Council streamline configuration, validate archive integrity, and optimize indexing and retrieval performance. These enhancements have strengthened data accessibility, reduced administrative overhead, and positioned Torbay Council with a stable, scalable archiving foundation for the future — all completed without service interruption.

Nomura

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · November 14, 2025

Business Case

Nomura International required an upgrade of existing archive to ensure continued compatibility with Microsoft Exchange on-premise and Microsoft 365 Exchange Online. Operating in a highly regulated financial services environment, Nomura needed to modernize its archiving infrastructure across multiple environments while maintaining operational stability, regulatory compliance, and uninterrupted access to archived communications.

"By completing the upgrades within the planned execution window, Nomura achieved a future-ready archiving platform that supports hybrid Exchange and Exchange Online operations without disruption to end users."
— Nomura International

The delivery team executed a structured existing archive upgrade using a swing-style deployment approach across Nomura's Core and IBD environments. The engagement included SQL database upgrades, deployment of updated existing archive binaries, validation of services, and confirmation of modern authentication for Exchange Online connectivity. The project was delivered remotely through secure access, with phased execution, iterative validation, and documented milestone sign-offs. Upon completion, the delivery team provided updated composite documentation detailing the post-upgrade environment, ensuring Nomura had a clear, auditable record of the upgraded and integrated existing archive architecture.

Polytype

Manufacturing

Historical Source Record · November 7, 2025

Business Case

Polytype SA, a leading manufacturer of decoration machines for packaging, relies on our enterprise archiving solution to support operational efficiency, compliance, and traceability across global production sites. Over time, growing volumes of machine data, design files, and email communications began to slow archive processing, creating retrieval delays. The organization needed a fast, scalable solution to restore performance, increase throughput, and maintain reliable access to archived information — all without disrupting daily operations or increasing risk.

"The team worked closely with us to complete documentation and follow-up tasks as we migrated users. We did encounter a few unexpected configuration items during the project, but Joe and Walt quickly resolved them to ensure everything continued without disruption."
— Patrick Ruffieux

We partnered closely with Polytype (existing archive) to resolve performance and usability issues across their archiving environment. Our team first addressed existing archive integration within Outlook, implementing targeted registry modifications to restore deprecated Microsoft web-call functionality while maintaining a seamless user experience. We then optimized archiving throughput by analyzing journal and legacy mailbox ingestion, fine-tuning system parameters, and assessing folder structures to remove processing bottlenecks. In parallel, we began developing a permanent binary solution to replace the temporary helper utility currently in use. Lastly, we initiated work on a structured retention policy to reduce their archive footprint and associated infrastructure costs. These combined efforts are enhancing processing stability, improving accessibility, and establishing a scalable foundation for long-term data governance.

Diversified Energy

Energy

Historical Source Record · November 7, 2025

existing archive training turned a complex archive handoff into fast, defensible discovery—without slowing integration.

Business Case

When Diversified Energy acquired Maverick Resources, it inherited a hosted existing archive containing years of regulated email. During integration, Diversified's Legal needed fast, defensible access for matters and holds while IT reassessed retention and target architecture. The challenge: maintain chain-of-custody and responsiveness without disruption, enable rapid search/exports for urgent requests, and establish clear governance for what to retain post-integration.

"The training went great. Kerry showed us how to navigate the interface for creating cases and doing exports. He also sent over documentation. Our legal team will review and come back with any changes to the requirements for what they want to retain. I'll provide updates as I receive them, and it may be worth sending a periodic email to check status. Thanks for getting this lined up for us."
— Charley, Diversified Energy

The delivery team delivered a focused existing archive Discovery enablement program. We trained administrators and legal users on case creation, search strategy, and export workflows; configured role-based access; documented legal holds and audit trails; and provided quick-start guides, saved searches, and response SLAs. We also offered managed, targeted exports. Result: Legal gained self-serve, defensible discovery immediately, while IT advanced integration planning with clear retention and governance guardrails.

University City Housing

Real Estate

Historical Source Record · October 31, 2025

Business Case

University City Housing, a leading property management organization, relies on our enterprise archive to support compliance, tenant communications, and operational efficiency. Over time, archive processing began to slow, creating backlogs across high-volume mailboxes and departments. This made it more difficult for staff to quickly locate and retrieve important records, including leasing documents and resident communications. The organization needed a fast, scalable solution to restore performance, increase throughput, and maintain reliable access to archived information — all without disrupting daily operations or increasing risk.

"The team was responsive, knowledgeable, and walked us through each step of the process. Any technical issues we encountered were handled quickly and professionally, which helped us maintain continuity for our users. The guidance and follow-through from the team made the entire experience smooth and efficient."
— Kyle Rosa, IT Director

We partnered closely with University City Housing to address performance and usability challenges across their archiving environment. Our team first tackled existing archive Anywhere browser functionality within Outlook, implementing registry adjustments to re-enable Microsoft-deprecated web-call behavior while ensuring a seamless user experience. We then focused on improving archiving throughput — analyzing journal and historical mailbox ingestion, tuning system settings, and reviewing mailbox folder counts to eliminate bottlenecks. In parallel, we began developing a more permanent binary solution to replace the interim helper utility already in place. Finally, we initiated work on a structured retention policy to reduce their CapEx archive footprint, currently approaching four terabytes. This combined effort is improving daily processing, stabilizing access, and setting the foundation for long-term governance and scale.

Latham & Watkins LLP

Legal

Historical Source Record · October 20, 2025

From backlog to breakthrough—smarter tuning delivered fast, reliable archiving at scale.

Business Case

Latham & Watkins, a top global law firm, depends on our enterprise archive to meet retention and discovery needs. Over time, archiving slowed and a backlog grew, especially in very large mailboxes, making it harder to find and deliver messages quickly. The firm needed a fast, reliable fix that boosted daily throughput without disrupting attorneys or creating risk.

"The improvements are tangible across regions with higher throughput and greater stability, strengthening our ability to meet retention and discovery timelines. It is great news that we are seeing such significant performance gains in the archiving process. I appreciate the team's continued effort and partnership in getting us here."
— Paul ten Berge, Director of Technology, Latham & Watkins LLP

We partnered closely with Latham to diagnose bottlenecks, then tuned the system's "built-in wait time" between steps, carefully trimming it from a long delay to a much shorter one. We also set smart rules to skip ultra-large folders during catch-up, cleaned up configuration hiccups, and right-sized supporting components. The results were dramatic: sustained gains (of 5 to 10x) and a smoother, steadier archive across the firm's three regions (USA, EU, and Asia).

Viatris

Healthcare

Historical Source Record · October 8, 2025

Business Case

Viatris needed to strengthen oversight of enterprise email and employee communications to meet stringent FDA and life-sciences regulatory requirements. Compliance, legal, and quality teams rely on timely, defensible supervision of communications related to product promotion, adverse events, and regulated interactions, making visibility and auditability critical. As Viatris standardized on Microsoft 365, it sought a modern supervision solution that could integrate seamlessly with Exchange Online, enforce policy-driven monitoring, and scale across a global workforce, without disrupting day-to-day operations or increasing compliance risk.

"The result was a smooth transition to a scalable, policy-driven supervision framework that strengthened regulatory oversight without impacting daily business operations. We are now looking to expand the use of Supervision globally to our European offices."
— Viatris

We upgraded existing archive to a release compatible with Exchange Online, provisioned a least-privileged service account, and completed the Azure App Registration. Our team updated synchronization scripts and configuration files, validated mailbox updates through iterative testing, scheduled resilient sync services, and aligned user identities to Exchange Online–bound mailboxes. Outcome: current archives, accurate mailbox pointers, faster eDiscovery, and a future-ready platform delivered with minimal disruption.

Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners

Government

Historical Source Record · October 6, 2025

Business Case

The Board of Police Commissioners of Kansas City (KCPD) needed to modernize enterprise email archiving as it adopted Microsoft 365. Investigators, attorneys, and administrators rely on fast, defensible access to historical communications, so KCPD sought to preserve its proven existing archive while ensuring seamless continuity, strict retention, and auditability in the cloud. The challenge: upgrade existing archive and integrate with Exchange Online without disrupting mission-critical operations.

"The team worked with us effectively to complete documentation items and follow-up as we migrated users. We did encounter some unexpected configurations during the project, which Joe and Walt quickly resolved to keep everything moving without disruption."
— Jeff Dillbeck, Applications Support, Board of Police Commissioners of Kansas City (KCPD)

European Fund Administration

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · October 1, 2025

Business Case

European Fund Administration (EFA), a leading financial services provider, needed to modernize its archiving infrastructure by migrating legacy data from its aging Centera storage environment to a more efficient and scalable platform. With strict compliance, retention, and operational requirements, EFA sought a trusted partner to execute a seamless migration with minimal disruption to ongoing operations and to ensure full data integrity throughout the process.

"Despite the length of the operation, everything went well. I would like to thank Inigo for his efficiency and availability. Thank you again."
— Donato Ianigro, Automation Administrator, European Fund Administration

PremCloud Resources designed and executed a comprehensive Storage Migration Project tailored to EFA's needs. Leveraging our existing archive Storage Manager (StoRM), we configured new data stores, created migration rules, and carefully managed task execution to move data from Centera to Dell ECS S3 storage. Our professional services team oversaw progress, verified data integrity post-migration, and provided guidance throughout, resulting in a smooth, compliant, and successful migration.

Sandy Spring Bank / Atlantic Union

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · September 30, 2025

Business Case

Sandy Spring Bank required rapid remediation of legacy existing archive email stubs in advance of its merger with Atlantic Union Bank. As part of Microsoft Exchange Online migration and M&A readiness, Sandy Spring needed to rehydrate archived message stubs back into live mailboxes to ensure continuity of communications, user accessibility, and compliance with retention and discovery requirements prior to consolidation.

"By resolving stubbed content in advance of the merger, Sandy Spring enabled a cleaner tenant transition, minimized post-merger remediation, and supported legal, compliance, and operational readiness during a critical transformation period."
— Sandy Spring Bank

The delivery team executed a controlled existing archive unstubber and rehydration process designed to restore archived email content directly into Exchange Online–targeted mailboxes. The engagement included analysis of legacy existing archive configurations, validation of stubbed message populations, and phased rehydration to ensure data integrity and performance stability. The project was delivered using a staged execution plan with iterative validation, allowing Sandy Spring Bank to confirm successful rehydration, mailbox alignment, and user accessibility throughout the process. Services were sequenced to align with merger milestones and Exchange Online readiness, resulting in a future-ready email environment with reduced technical debt and no impact to end users.

University of Virginia

Education

Historical Source Record · August 29, 2025

Business Case

UVA leverages Smart Stack 3.0's Data Drop for secure file sync and sharing with external counsel for eDiscovery cases. As the university's data sharing needs grew across departments including HR, Compliance, and Student Affairs, they required a comprehensive, secure solution that could support diverse use cases while maintaining strict data governance.

"We use Data Drop for legal collections with other departments and to share legal productions. Data Drop makes it much easier for them to share that information with us, and for us to track it and analyze it for eDiscovery. Our Freedom of Information Act officer also now uses it to share FOIA productions with requestors outside the University. We take the security and privacy of our students, faculty, and the citizens of the Commonwealth very seriously. Data Drop meets our requirements for highly sensitive data transfer."
— Caroline Walters, Records Officer, University of Virginia

To gain capacity and flexibility, we reimplemented our Advanced Discovery solution that UVA was currently using on different infrastructure and then deployed and integrated an instance of Data Drop. With the new and enhanced deployment, they could upload data directly into Data Drop and, from there, move that data around as needed to share with other individuals or ingest into Advanced Discovery for processing. Likewise, after completing their processing in Advanced Discovery, they can either make the data available for download or share it with Data Drop.

Blank Rome LLP

Legal

Historical Source Record · August 11, 2025

Modernized existing archive with minimal downtime—secure, compliant, Microsoft 365–ready, and on a clear path to Exchange SE.

Business Case

Blank Rome LLP, an Am Law 100 firm with 16 offices, relies on existing archive for compliant archiving and eDiscovery while advancing an aggressive cloud strategy. With web and SQL servers on Windows Server 2016 and existing archive at version 9.3.1.6, the firm needed a supportable, secure path to Microsoft 365, modern authentication, and Exchange 2019/Subscription Edition—without service disruption or risk to ongoing matters and retrieval obligations.

"Smart Stack 3.0 collaborated closely with our team, laid out clear steps, paused services appropriately during cutovers, and verified functionality after each change. Communication was proactive and issues were addressed quickly, which kept downtime to a minimum. Everything is performing as expected, and I'm satisfied with both the process and the result."
— Anthony J. Pitzorella, Infrastructure Systems Engineer, Blank Rome LLP

Working side-by-side with Blank Rome's team, we upgraded existing archive in-place to version 9.3.10, executed Solr/Zookeeper patching, and coordinated in-place OS upgrades of the web and SQL servers to Windows Server 2022. We documented SSL thumbprint updates, enabled OAuth readiness, and validated Exchange 2019 connectivity—providing the platform swap at no extra cost. Tasks were paused and access locked during change windows, resulting in a stable, supportable, future-ready archive.

Arthrex

Healthcare

Historical Source Record · March 6, 2024

Independent archiving proved critical—recovering petabytes of email after a catastrophic cyber attack.

Business Case

Arthrex, a leading global manufacturer of medical devices, was impacted by a catastrophic cyber attack. The attack significantly impacted the company's daily operations, as the perpetrators encrypted several production systems. While the business continuity plan was initiated, they observed that even several backup systems were impacted by the breach, presenting significant challenges to their technical teams working to restore operations of critical business systems and restore the data to their recovery point objective. One of the critical systems was the Microsoft Exchange environment. The IT teams built a new Exchange environment but could not use the backups to restore the data, as this data was compromised.

"Having a third-party archive independent of Microsoft Exchange provided this customer with a critical degree of separation. Had they been using native Microsoft archiving, their end users would have lost access to all historical data, significantly impacting their operations."
— Smart Stack 3.0 Delivery Team

The Smart Stack 3.0 delivery team deployed its migration suite technology to facilitate the extraction of PST files for ingestion into the customer's greenfield Microsoft Exchange environment. This multi-thread solution allows several custodian PST extracts to be performed simultaneously. Within a few weeks, the team successfully exported several thousand mailboxes to PST and assisted the customer's IT team in mapping the data to the correct custodian mailboxes.

Muckle LLP

Legal

Historical Source Record · February 2025

Business Case

Muckle LLP required an upgrade of their existing archive system to version 9.3.8 for improved compatibility with Microsoft Exchange on-premise and Exchange Online (EXO) integration. Facing potential system inefficiencies, they partnered with the delivery team existing archive to ensure seamless upgrading and integration, minimizing downtime. This project would enable Muckle to improve data archiving, compliance, and long-term scalability while enhancing overall system performance and reliability.

"Their seamless execution ensured minimal disruption, and the final results have enhanced our system's performance and integration with Exchange Online. The project was delivered on time, and their post-project support provided invaluable insights for our team. We now have a more efficient archiving system, enabling us to operate more effectively. We highly recommend Smart Stack 3.0 for any data management and archiving projects."
— Andrew Black, Director of IT, Muckle LLP

Consumers Energy

Utilities

Historical Source Record · 2019

Decommissioned 25 servers and achieved $750,000+ in savings while improving eDiscovery speed by 400%.

Business Case

Consumer's Energy had a large on-premise data store in their legacy MyArchive system. The performance of the system was poor due to the age of the environment. It was costly and difficult to manage, and they were looking at a significant spend to refresh the aging hardware.

"I was truly impressed that their single instancing and compression capabilities could deliver that sort of ROI to us."
— Mike Long, Principal Audit Manager, Consumers Energy

ZiDOL Resources assisted Consumers Energy with analyzing the legacy data to understand the breadth and scope, as well as the storage and financial impact of implementing various retention policies. ZiDOL also helped navigate understanding the various regulatory and compliance concerns that impacted the data, as well as coordinating the understanding and buy-in of various groups (Information Technology, Legal, and Compliance) that had to approve the process. ZiDOL also migrated data from a legacy Lotus Notes environment to the ZiDOL Cloud, allowing them to reduce further costs by eliminating Lotus Notes servers and licensing.

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

Utilities

Historical Source Record · 2022

Business Case

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) provides water to over 19 million people in Southern California and is the largest supplier of treated water in the United States. MWD had a major cloud initiative and needed to reduce its on-premise data footprint while cutting costs. The goal was to migrate their messaging platform to Office 365 and eliminate the on-premise legacy data archive. They needed robust backup of the online data as well.

"MWD had a major cloud initiative, and we implemented both Office 365 and the hosted archive last year. The hosted archive implementation was easy, with very few resources required on our end. One key part of it was that we were able to decommission two legacy on-premise archives, resulting in a reduction in the servers and storage that we have to maintain. The hosted system is fast; we can perform eDiscovery searches consisting of hundreds of thousands of results in a few seconds."
— Darrell Saunders, Security Analyst, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

ZiDOL assisted MWD in migrating 2 legacy archive systems to the ZiDOL Cloud. This resulted in cost reductions due to the decommissioning of on-premise servers and storage. Using the archive also eased migration to Office 365 by reducing the data to migrate from on-premise to Exchange online and solving issues with moving large mailboxes to the cloud. The archive allows them to meet eDiscovery and compliance requests while avoiding additional costs for a separate backup solution.

Northwood University

Education

Historical Source Record · 2019

Business Case

Northwood University is a private university focused on business education with its main campus in Midland, Michigan. Northwood had a major cloud initiative to reduce costs and on-premise infrastructure.

"Northwood had a major cloud initiative, and as part of this, we moved our archive to the ZiDOL cloud. Our migration to the cloud was painless, ZiDOL performed the move as a turnkey service. After moving to the ZiDOL cloud, the archive performance was even better. The search performance is spectacular. In addition to the lively search performance, the archive interface is intuitive and easy to use, making our investigations fast and easy to perform. The ZiDOL archive is critical to our data retention and governance strategies."
— Davis Yost, Associate Director of IT Security, Northwood University

EY Global Services

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · 2024

Business Case

EY Global Services is a professional services network with headquarters in London, United Kingdom. EY provides a broad range of services to corporations, including assurance, tax, consulting, strategy, and transactions. EY is one of the Big Four accounting firms, with more than 270,000 employees and 700 offices in over 150 countries. EY had to conduct complex searches for critical audits across a large data estate. It was a slow process, and delays were common due to aging systems and searches that couldn't be completed.

"EY is a large organization, and in Germany and Switzerland, for example, it is capturing a complete record of all of our communications. That's important for us to meet the stringent compliance and legal requirements. It's also a large volume of data, 250 TB in Germany alone. One of the challenges is that if someone from the legal team, or an auditor, requests an investigation, we have to respond very quickly. We can perform a search based on custodians, date ranges, or keywords, and have a result in 30 seconds. That is magic to us."
— Benoit Ferron, EY Global Services

ZiDOL Resources re-architected their systems and processes so that audit, compliance, and legal inquiries could be completed reliably, on time, and with less effort. ZiDOL implemented the latest version of the ZiDOL Archive and optimized their IDOL environment to provide an environment with improved performance and reliability. The simple interface makes it easy to respond to complex requests and make sure that they are compliant with EY requirements.

Lloyds Banking Group

Financial Services

Historical Source Record · 2018

Consolidated three archive solutions and migrated 50TB for 8,000 users—now archiving over 2 billion items.

Business Case

The bank had 8,000 employees using Enterprise Vault (a legacy EV solution called KVS), which was no longer the preferred archiving solution. They needed help to migrate these mailboxes and retire Enterprise Vault. The bank had two different email archiving solutions for the traders spread over three journal archive solutions: 2,000 on KVS (legacy EV solution), 6,000 on EV and 6,000 on existing archive. The bank was looking to consolidate these solutions into one and was not particularly happy with the performance of EV eDiscovery.

"Thanks to the team's excellent work, the customer was happy with the work we delivered. This project presented huge challenges for CMS. At the time this was the largest migration it had faced and we had some performance issues as well as corrupt data from the old KVS solution but we were able to demonstrate to the bank our ability to resolve issues and assist the customers."
— Lloyds Banking Group Project Team

Inspira Health

Healthcare

Historical Source Record · 2019

Business Case

Inspira had over 17 TB of data in a legacy archiving system that was soon to be out of support. They were also in the process of moving to Office 365 and needed an archiving and eDiscovery solution that worked with Exchange Online.

"We use the delegates feature extensively. I like that I can get expert assistance with eDiscovery searches. We also like the fact that we have a copy of the data outside the Microsoft ecosystem, it makes a great bargaining chip when it comes to our Microsoft enterprise agreement."
— Andrew Gahm, Systems Engineering Manager, Inspira Health Network

Earlier Smart Stack edition · Historical presentation, not the January 2027 offering.

Smart Stack 4.0 Briefing

On-demand executive presentation

Select your industry for a tailored introduction to AI-Ready Trusted Data and Copilot acceleration.

Choose Industry

9 slides • 5 min read • Keyboard navigation