Computer Articles

Emails form the communication lifeline for most companies today. While it is important to store important email communication for future reference, it is equally important to have adequate methods which help in accessing and retrieval of this email. Email Archiving helps with this. It is a systematic process of capturing every email that hits the mail server, and based on a specific set of criteria, these emails can be easily made accessible at a future date.

Microsoft Exchange server is the most common email exchange medium in the world. Most companies backup data on their Exchange server. Backups, however, are very different from an archiving function. With backups, a company secures data for purposes of restoring that information onto a server after it goes down. Archiving, however, gives the company a capability to store, discover, and retrieve individual emails extremely quickly. There are many reasons why people have a need to archive emails. Three prominent reasons are as follows:

Adherence to Regulatory Requirements: Email archiving helps in conformance with regulatory compliance. Companies trading publicly are expected to retain all information, including emails, anywhere between 5-10 years, for any government or regulatory audits. Merely backing up data might not help in this scenario, since you will be required to provide specific information or a specific mail exchange. If you haven’t invested in a good email archiving solution, this can cause chaos, since pulling out the right information from terabytes of data isn’t an easy task. You may end up spending millions of dollars in fines for non compliance, just because you are not able to find the right information.

Litigation and eDiscovery Compliance: The news is abuzz with recent scandals and lawsuits like the Virginia Tech, sexual harassment cases, fraudulent ponzi schemes and so on. According to the Federal Rules of Civil procedure (FRCP), any company with a possibility of getting into litigation can be affected and needs to have proper eDicovery processes in place. Lawyers and IT staff find it increasingly difficult to find the right information in case of a litigation, if you do not have the right email archiving solution in place. Additionally, lawyers have to provide judges with detailed information on where the evidence data is stored and how accessible it was. Lack of a proper solution can render this process unachievable. It can then become challenging to serve the demands of law.

Storage Management on the Exchange Server: Gartner quotes that a whopping 97% of all communication in today’s businesses is done via email. Email is growing rapidly at the rate of 40% per year. This implies that your Exchange server is being heavily used with the growing data. You might also be thinking of upgrading to a higher capacity server. Email Archiving can help you resolve this issue. Using a proper archiving tool will help lighten up the Exchange server for improved efficiency, performance, and better storage management. By configuring your Exchange server with an archiving solution to handle the email growth more effectively and efficiently, you will postpone the need to upgrade the Exchange server and, subsequently, increase the ROI on that Exchange server.

With so many advantages to Email Archiving, it is prudent for companies to invest in a good Email Archiving solution to ease out the demands on their email servers, meet their eDiscovery needs and adhere to regulatory compliance.