Enterprises everywhere and of all sizes are employing e-mail archiving to reduce the expense of defending themselves in lawsuits, to demonstrate regulatory compliance, to solve e-mail server storage shortages, and to enforce governance policies. Begin navigating the sea of competing solutions by answering these key questions.

Four Key Questions

Dozens of vendors offer e-mail archiving solutions. These providers range from outsourcing to licensed software, from records management suites to e-mail specific solutions. To narrow this large list, IT leadership must answer these four questions:

1.   Transitory or Repository? The enterprise’s attitude toward e-mail will guide e-mail strategy. Enterprises that view e-mail as transitory require users to transfer business-relevant content out of e-mail, and usually prefer to eliminate e-mail on a tight schedule (e.g., every 90 days). These enterprises don’t retain much e-mail and are less likely to fund an e-mail archive. Enterprises that view e-mail stores as repositories of intellectual property (IP) retained for future use will find legal, compliance, governance, and business drivers toward deploying e-mail archiving.

2.   R/DMS or point-solution? Enterprises that already use a Records/Document Management System (R/DMS) solution tend to treat e-mail as transitory, requiring business content to be transferred from e-mail to the R/DMS. These enterprises may wish to automate this process with R/DMS e-mail archiving modules, thus integrating e-mail archiving into their broad content management suite. Enterprises without R/DMSes are selecting a point-solution, unless implementing an R/DMS is also an option. Beware of excessive pricing for e-mail archiving modules.

The R/DMS acquisition decision is outside the scope of this note. Suffice it to say that few enterprises are interested in deploying an R/DMS just to empower e-mail e-discovery or relieve the e-mail server load. Precisely because of this, much of the mid-market is acquiring point solutions. For guidance regarding mid-market appropriate R/DMS, refer to the Info-Tech Advisor research note, “Document Management for Less Than $50,000.”

3.   On-premises or remote? Hosted services are usually priced per mailbox per month. The advantages of outsourcing e-mail archiving include:

• Platform independence. A hosted e-mail archiving solution captures e-mail en route to the enterprise mail server. Therefore, the one service can support Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, or Novell GroupWise. The downside is that e-discovery must be performed through Web tools and is not integrated into the end user’s client.
• Increased disaster recovery. Retaining a remote provider inherently increases data protection and transfers risk (but not responsibility) by providing a duplicate copy at a remote location. The negative is that enterprise e-mail is stored by an offsite third party.
• Professional management. Leaving e-mail archiving setup, configuration, and maintenance to people who handle that on a full-time basis should result in better performance and service.
• Removing a burden for in-house IT. Exporting the e-mail archiving function to an outsourcer frees internal IT resources to focus on critical IT needs.

Enterprises will not want to pursue hosting services if the costs outweigh the value of these benefits to the enterprise. Enterprises are less likely to adopt if leadership is averse to outsourcing or averse to storing repositories of e-mail with third parties.

4.   Server or Appliance? The e-mail archiving appliance market focuses on ease-of-setup and low-maintenance, but at the cost of scalability, client integration, and expanded content archiving features. However, some of these solutions feature interesting search technology that may be ahead of their server-based competitors.

Recommendations

1. Define the enterprise’s e-mail archiving strategy. Use this note to help determine the enterprise’s e-mail archiving strategy. Conclude this process by creating a definite strategy statement. For example, “The enterprise views e-mail as a repository of intellectual property. To empower better business use of this store, IT will pursue the acquisition of an on-premises e-mail archiving appliance.” Use this statement to constrain vendor selection.
2. Identify the enterprise’s drivers toward adoption. Use the forthcoming second Info-Tech Advisor research note in this series, “E-mail Archiving: Identify Drivers to Narrow Vendor Selection,” to inform the enterprise’s definition of a successful e-mail archiving project. Take the stated business needs and implementation goals to vendors.
3. Focus on leading solutions. Narrowing vendor selection is best performed once IT leadership is armed with a strategy and a clear understanding of drivers and goals. Next, use the forthcoming third Info-Tech Advisor research note in this series, “E-mail Archiving: Look to Leaders to Narrow Vendor Selection,” to identify leading solutions that should be on the shortlist.

Bottom Line

Before investigating e-mail archiving solutions, IT leaders need to establish the enterprise’s e-mail archiving strategy. IT leaders must think through these questions to guide vendor selection.