Glossary — Corporate digital estate
What is a company's digital estate?
All the digital assets a company holds in the course of its activity: files, projects, databases, source code, editorial content, credentials, cloud accounts, incoming and outgoing email. It carries legal, commercial and operational value that goes well beyond storage cost.
What it is
A company's digital estate is composite. It includes:
- Production files: client deliverables, brand source files, high-resolution media, blueprints, designs.
- Technical assets: source code, Git repositories, database dumps, configuration files, infrastructure-as-code.
- Public content: website, editorial blog, social accounts, press communications.
- Archives: accounting, HR, contracts, incoming and outgoing email.
- Digital identities: domain name, admin accounts on SaaS tools, technical credentials.
This whole is neither a storage pool nor a single asset: it is a relational structure that cessation can disintegrate unless it is taken over within a coherent framework.
Why it matters
The value of a digital estate rests as much on the relationships it documents as on the files themselves. A client deliverable without its associated contract loses legal value. Source code without the database it consumes cannot be restarted. Email without the account on which it was received is no longer enforceable. It is this coherence that must be preserved — not just the bytes.
How Archivum approaches it
Archivum does not archive a file: it archives a documented structure. The case file includes an inventory of assets (with cryptographic fingerprints), a dependency map (which file refers to which contract, account, domain), and a usage note. The goal is that, ten years later at arbitration, the whole remains readable without depending on a disappeared director's memory.