Archived File System, well known to the public as bank check online viewers, email retention and other scan to server systems.

From Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive ;

An archives is a collection of historical records, as well as the place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s lifetime.

In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist. This means that archives (the places) are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings.

An archive within a company may look more like an application as opposed to the typical file/folder paradigm. A well known Archive product, Documentum Archive Services from EMC, ensures compliance with various regulatory and litigation requirements in very large corporations. Many solutions exist for archiving documents, but the important thing to remember; they are not dynamic file systems for ongoing work. Please contact us for more information.