There are other similar modules to choose from and I'm sure at least one of them would be able to replace the original file. I have not looked over the related modules in any detail, so I can't say which one would be better suited for your needs.

What do you think would be a reasonable amount of time to compress an averaged size file from one of the directories from the command line? Would you say that a tenth of a second would be reasonable? Multiple that time by 90,000 and that will give you a very rough estimate of the required time per directory. Assuming a tenth of a second average, you'd be looking at more than 2 hours per directory and that's not including the overhead of executing the system function/call.

Having an average of 90,000 files per dir seems to be a major factor in the overall problem. Can you rework your policies to work on 30 day intervals rather than 90 day intervals?