Archiving - policy or just doing it the easy way.

Perhaps it is because I am getting older but is there anyone out there that understands archiving?  I was at a presentation at HDS last Friday and I raised archiving as part of something that we were looking at.  HCAP came out of the woodwork but it did nothing to make me feel good about archiving. 

A feed at the RM site said that archiving had pushed storage software demand during the last quarter.  I eagerly followed the link but found nothing that suggested what software was being used.  I was actually gobsmacked to see CA had a solution as more often than not, any non Mainframe CA solution has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Symantec Enterprise Vault looks interesting to me but I have to admit being a fan of Veritas solutions.  So without dwelling on the best software and is it the organisations policy makers responsibilities to come up with stuff that just gets plugged into software, what are the feelings out there about archiving tools?  Is anyone really happy with their choice?

Its obviously much much more than backup.

Stephen