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Email Archiving For All
Michael Osterman from Osterman Research interviews Dean Richardson,
ArcMail’s Chief Marketing Officer. Learn how the ArcMail email archiving
solution can solve 8 of the top 10 IT problems facing businesses today!
MO: My company, Osterman Research, recently completed a survey of the
top 10 problems that small and mid-sized businesses face. In your opinion,
archiving solutions can solve maybe eight out of those 10 problems. Let’s go
through and discuss each one. The first problem concerns increasing backup
and restore times (49 percent). How can an archiving solution help to
address that issue?
DR: Companies are definitely struggling with the increased backup and
store times on mail servers due to the immense volume of e-mail increasing
on a daily basis. Because companies have to store this increasing volume of
e-mails on the mail server, it takes much longer to back up the mail. As a
result, during the backup periods or the time between the last good backup,
there is danger of losing the e-mails if a catastrophic server failure were
to occur. E-mail archiving allows organizations to archive e-mail in
realtime so the data is in two places at once; it is on the mail server as
well as in the archive. Also, once an e-mail archiving system is in place,
retention policies can be set on the mail server. The mail server will only
retain data on the mail server for a year or two, reducing backup times and
the consumable costs associated.
MO: Organizations relying solely on backup miss many e-mails that are
created and deleted between backup cycles. The archiving system can truly
protect an organization by preserving all copies of an e-mail. The second
problem we uncovered in our research is that of the growth in e-mail storage
(43 percent). We have actually found this to be the No. 1 problem in many
other surveys as well. How can an archiving solution help organizations deal
with rapid growth in e-mail storage?
DR: We have many clients who have overflowing mail systems, and we
encourage them to consider upgrading their mail servers to handle the extra
capacity. One of the solutions that many organizations implement is
mailbox-size restriction; however, this "solution" impacts end-users. If
they are in the middle of sending out e-mails and their storage limits have
been exceeded, the system blocks the e-mail transaction until the user
either deletes or moves mail off the server - which are both really bad
choices. End-users could potentially delete something that may be needed
later, or they move it onto their workstations which are typically not
backed up. With an archiving system, instead of having an intrusive policy
like the mailbox-size restriction, we recommend our customers implement
time-based retention policies. In fact, upgrading the mail server can be
delayed by removing the mail from the server and making it accessible
through the archive.
MO: The third problem we found is increasing message size (41 percent).
E-mails used to be small kilobytes in size; but now, with larger attachments
involving multimedia, multi-megabyte files sent through e-mail are choking
e-mail servers and rapidly increasing the amount of storage required on
them. How does archiving address the issue of managing increasing message
size?
DR: Very much like the increase in e-mail storage: the larger the
attachments, the larger the storage. If the mail service’s primary function
is only to store mail needed immediately and frequently, the larger volume
of messages can be moved to an archive system. One of the other benefits of
an archive system is that the email is indexed and archived immediately and
all of the attachments are scanned for full text. If the user wants to
search for e-mails, whether they were from five minutes ago or five years
ago, he or she can do so much more quickly in the archives because they are
preindexed. Likewise, if an administrator, HR person or legal person wants
to find information containing e-mail or attachments, they can use the
archive to search on an enterprise-wide basis.
MO: The fourth issue deals with users sending large attachments through
e-mail (35 percent). Very large amounts of content going through e-mail is
clogging e-mail servers and increasing the size of message stores. How can
archiving address these issues?
DR: Archiving can help by moving that mail into an archive system
designed to handle large amounts of data. That is the primary function of an
archive system - to keep copies of all e-mails. Most archive systems, such
as the one provided by ArcMail, is designed to do that in a very efficient
manner. A mail server is a device that is designed to send and receive mail
and have a few messages in the mailbox; not to be a warehouse for large
attachments and huge amounts of e-mail. MO: No. 5 on our list is storage
costs (34 percent). The cost of storage is being driven up. How can an
archiving system help you to control these costs? DR: Storage costs are
certainly rising; they go up incrementally with the number and size of
e-mail messages on the mail server because full and incremental backups are
being done on a regular basis. The data is actually being stored multiple
times. With an archive, there is less concern with message storage as a
whole; there is a greater focus on the individual messages. There’s no
duplication of data - there is no need to do a backup of the whole archive
system every day. It only backs up what came in since the last backup was
done. The mail server consumable costs go down because there is no need to
move huge amounts of data to that expensive storage all the time. Once the
data is on the archive system, it only needs to be backed up once.
MO: No. 6 on our list is finding messaging content that is older than six
months (34 percent). In particular, if the e-mail inbox is used as a junk
drawer or tight quotas force content to be put into file servers or local
archives, finding that older content can be very difficult. Our research has
found that more than 90 percent of our users refer to old e-mail when
composing new e-mail. How can an archiving system help an organization and
individual users find that older content readily and without having to spend
much effort doing it?
DR: This is a really interesting problem because it involves a number
of bigger problems, such as being able to find e-mail messages, as well as
being able to search across the enterprise and find messages in a timely
manner for an HR investigation, legal investigation or just a company
information gathering investigation. The third problem is what to do with
information from employees who have left the company or changed roles.
Oftentimes when an employee leaves the company, their e-mail is either
burned to a CD or file and no one really knows where it is. All of their
contacts, contracts, discussions, agreements, negotiations or even
intellectual property is now considered lost because it is inaccessible. One
of the added advantages of archiving is that it keeps copies of message in a
format on the system that allows the end-user to find things very quickly;
everything is indexed and archived immediately. E-mail searches can be
conducted based on who the e-mails are from or to, attachment names, subject
names, content, whether the information is in the body or in attachments and
by date range. All of these results are typically available in just a few
seconds. An enterprise administrator, HR user or legal person is able to get
results from an enterprise-wide search across the entire archive and the
entire corpus of e-mail for the company in a matter of seconds. In fact, I
use this on a daily basis. My Defender is open all the time because it is
quicker for me to search for an e-mail in Defender than it is to change the
sort order in my mail client. Also, remote users can use our product on the
Internet, and even on cell phone browsers, securely accessing mail when
traveling or at home. It allows e-mail access regardless of a user’s
location. On a workstation, people are strapped to a single e-mail client
which doesn’t really have advanced search capabilities that produce results
in a reasonable amount of time.
MO: No. 7 is software costs (31 percent). How does archiving help an
organization manage software costs and keep them under control?
DR: We do not license our product by the seat or by the user. One
reason companies prefer our model is that they do not like software that is
licensed per seat or per user, because they must determine how many actual
users they have and what is a mailbox cost and what is an actual human cost.
With our product, everything comes inside the appliance. We help you size it
ahead of time; the number of users is an irrelevant point.
MO: Rounding out the top ten list, we have spyware, spam, viruses, worms,
trojans, etc. - all things that archiving cannot directly address, but seven
out of those top 10 issues can address them. For small and mid-sized
businesses, it appears that archiving should be a core part of their
strategies. Do you have any comments on that?
DR: Archiving should be a core part of business strategy, primarily
because moving mail off the mail server allows it to run more efficiently
and respond more quickly to user requests. Our clients use our archiving
system to search for intellectual property when defending intellectual
property claims. We also have clients who have saved thousands of dollars by
finding an e-mail containing an agreement or negotiation. Therefore, purely
from an intellectual property point of view, archiving is definitely
beneficial. Also, archiving systems generally modify user behavior.
Archiving systems cause a reduction in casual, questionable e-mails because
users realize that the e-mails are being kept. This can result in reduced
liability for the company. In sum, archiving is necessary for compliance and
message storage, and helps with less obvious factors like improved user
behavior.
MO: Our research has found that there are many regulations and laws
concerning e-mail archiving, making it almost impossible to standardize one
set of regulations or legal opinions. What do you hear from customers about
rules and regulations? For example, have the new Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure (FRCP) changed the way companies need to archive e-mails?
DR: The FRCP now requires companies to be able to list and produce
their electronically stored information (ESI). Since first implementation of
this amendment since December 1, 2006, courts have been holding fast to this
rule and requiring companies in discovery mode to provide e-mail messages -
sometimes at very excessive costs. The problem with coming up with one
number as to how long you keep e-mail is that there are many different
regulations.
MO: How can companies be sure that making the decision to implement
archiving will not be a burden on IT?
DR: First of all, organizations should choose an e-mail archiving
appliance that does not require much overhead. The Defender is very easy to
install and manage; in fact, there is little or no ongoing management
required. All IT has to do is put the program into place and it will reduce
the load from the mail server. The mail server will run happier, backups
will be quicker and consumable costs for tapes and network storage will go
down. Not only does it pull all of that mail off the mail server, but
because the mail server runs and performs better, there will be fewer
problems with the mail server level. In fact, a number of our customers have
been able to put off upgrades to one or more years due to the reduction in
the storage on the mail server.
MO: How expensive is it to get an archiving strategy in place?
DR: Our products start at $3,000 for 250 gigabytes and go up to 12
terabyte units for $35,000. Considering the cost of operating a mail
service, often an archiving system can be implemented for less than a mail
server upgrade. Also, considering all of the backup tapes being used to back
up the data in the mail server, a lot of money is saved by moving that to
the archive system.
MO: What are the most important factors to consider when selecting an
e-mail archiving capability?
DR: Growth is extremely important to consider. The archiving system
should be easy to implement and should not require training of a subject
matter expert within the organization. Also, the hardware should match the
requirements of the software. One of the reasons that we went with an
appliance for our product model is to ensure everything is matched for the
end-user. We have chosen appliances that are tuned specifically to work in
an archiving environment. Our databases are fast, allowing very quick
searches. Updating merely involves clicking a button to update from a
previous version to a new version. It does not pose any software
installation issues. There is also a solution that allows the user to do
remote archiving, but they are on a pre-user basis and are fairly expensive.
They are easier to set up, but are more costly in the long term because the
per-user cost is higher. Also, that solution keeps the data offsite, which
makes it more difficult to retrieve. If large quantities must be retrieved,
the network connection poses a limitation.
MO: What is the bottom-line reason for archiving?
DR: As an end-user and a former IT administrator, the most important
reason to archive e-mail is to allow users to access their data and find
that data. Organizations pay people to create this data and people are using
e-mail as a filing cabinet for all of their files, information and
conversations. With the increasing volume of e-mail, it becomes too detailed
to find what they are looking for. An archiving system not only meets the
compliance needs and puts the company in a much better position if ever
involved in a lawsuit, but it frees users to find what they are looking for
in their e-mail or the email of someone who has left the company. It also
saves money with the cost associated with running and upgrading mail
servers. However, productivity is essentially how an archiving solution will
pay for itself on a daily basis. |
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