Email Management and Email Storage

Welcome to Storage File, a website for buyers that enables you to get quotations from providers of Email Archiving solutions in the US.

Email Storage and Retrieval: For many years email has been the communication tool of choice.  Whilst email has many business benefits, it can bring major problems when it comes to storage and retrieval of the information contained within email messages. 

If you were to ask most IT professionals to retrieve a group of historical emails regarding a particular project or individual it would usually be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.  Most companies do not have the storage capacity to store all emails indefinitely.  Recent studies have shown that heavy email users will process up to 19,000 emails each year and that email storage requirements are growing at 37% a year. 

For emails to be retrieved efficiently they should be stored in an indexed and relational database separate to the email server.  This will allow any email, or data contained in an email, to be retrieved easily.  Ideally, email servers should not be used as a storage device, but unfortunately for most of us that's exactly what they need to be.  Most Exchange servers are built with storage in mind and large disks and processing power usually form the basis of the server specification. 

In recent years, email archiving systems have made the process of storing emails a lot easier and many companies have devised email retention and email usage policies as a result of introducing such systems.  Archiving solutions range from in-house server solutions to managed services and provide seamless archiving of emails with no need for any user intervention.  Even if a user deletes an email from their mailbox, the archiving system will have already hived off the email in question away from the user's mailbox.  However, email archiving solutions come at a price and the implementation of such systems by businesses is still relatively slow. 

Email Management and Archiving

Unfortunately, the legal aspect of data storage is only the tip of the iceberg.  You also need to ensure that your system is able to cope with the demand that email imposes and that means a fair amount of daily monitoring and vigilant housekeeping.  On top of that you also need to implement comprehensive email usage policies across your user community.  It is little wonder that many IT teams include one person who is solely responsible for the management of the company email system.  Larger corporations will often employ whole teams dedicated to messaging and email management. 

Business records are a key part of any business.  They provide clear evidence of transactions, events, and all business-related activities.  It is the information that is stored within a business record that is vital and not the medium they are stored on.  Whether these records are stored on paper or on email they need to be properly managed.  Email business records help to promote and protect the legal interests of your organisation and need to be readily available should evidence of business activities ever need to be presented.   

Electronic discovery (also called e-discovery or ediscovery) is the process by which electronic data can be sought, found, secured, and investigated for the purposes of using it in a criminal or civil legal case.  Hopefully, your organisation will never be subject to this kind of scrutiny, but if it is you will need to be ahead of the game and know exactly how to get your hands on any data that is requested.  This legislation has meant that many companies have reviewed their data management strategies to ensure they comply with the law and at the same time protect the organisation's reputation and bottom line. 

Many companies have invested in email archiving solutions which help to ensure every single email generated and received by the company is stored for as long as is required.  Rules for email retention differ by country and some countries have no legislation in place at all.  Retention requirements also differ depending on industry.  For example, banks and financial institutions are governed by more stringent legislation to that governing other industries.  Email archiving solutions come at a price.  Hardware needs to be robust and most archiving software is priced per mailbox so if you have 1000s of mailboxes in your organization the price can skyrocket. 

However, not all companies are ready or have the resources to purchase an archiving solution.  Some have implemented the use of PST archives in order to hive off old emails and ensure they have some form of archiving solution in place.   This solution is usually the result of having limited storage available on the Exchange server or because of mailbox quotas. 

If you have quotas in place, users will receive a notification message alerting them when their mailbox is almost at its limit.  They then have a decision to make.  Most users will call asking for their mailbox quota to be increased which isn't always an option if space is limited!  Many will delete old emails in order to free up space in their mailbox.  Whilst this will resolve their immediate problem, the risk is that they may delete emails critical to their work or that contain sensitive or personal data that may be required at a later date. 

Get Email Archiving Quotes

Read Email Archiving articles

Related suppliers

Google Postini

Manage email retention with a centralized, searchable archive so administrators and users can locate email quickly.Read the following articles to learn more: SasS - Ideal technology for email archiving is there ROI for email archiving?...