Archiving Email for Compliance and Competitive Advantage
Why archive email?
Email is ubiquitous. No matter where you look, people are
reading their email; whether at anInternet kiosk at an airport, on a laptop in
an Internet café or on their smart phones in the middle of church. As a result
of the growing reliance upon email, people have started to use email
applications as the 21st century filing cabinet where they document their
activities, store files andimportant communications and conduct business. At the
same time, users are being overwhelmed with the amount of email they receive
each day, making it difficult to effectively extract data stored in email
messages. In addition, if email stops working, business for many people and
their organizations comes to a halt as IT teams scramble to address the problem.
When it comes to today's information age, there has never been a
more business-critical communications tool than email. Like the manila folders
of old, the virtual folders have become gold mines of information.
Unfortunately, while the manila folders only caused paper cuts, when mishandled,
the virtual folders can create a number of challenges for organizations.
Backing up vs. Archiving
The key to understanding the importance of email archiving is to
understand the difference between
archiving and backing-up. While most companies
back-up their data to a tape drive or other media, the process of restoring,
searching and using the information can be time consuming and difficult.
Archiving differs in that it allows organizations to store information in such a
way that email can quickly be searched, restored and used for a competitive
advantage. The question of why archive has a number of answers. This white paper
will outline the following top 10 reasons why organizations should archive their
email. While not all email archiving solutions are alike, these top 10 reasons
should be considered when evaluating the implementation of
email archiving software or hardware.
1. Knowledge Management
2. Storage Management
3. Risk Management
4. Employee Productivity
5. Business Continuity
6. Compliance and Legal Discovery
7. Improve network performance
8. Disaster Recovery
9. Reduce Load on IT Department
10. Email Dexterity
Knowledge Management
Email is the most common means of
communicating in business today, for everything from simple greetings to
contract negotiations. A recent article in KM World Magazine sums up the
importance of email in today's business world:
“Twenty years ago, no permanent records existed that weren't
physically printed on paper, due to legal precedents. Now 60 to 70 percent of
business critical data is, at some point, contained in email, so the need to
manage, store, search and retrieve those electronic records is paramount. Email
Management is now mission-critical.”
Access to business-critical
information. Email applications have become repositories of communications and
files that more often than not contain information that is relevant and can be
used and reused for business purposes. Legacy back-up systems are not designed
to allow users and organizations to access and search email files. The concept
behind email archiving is to allow organizations to maintain a complete, secure
and real-time archive of every inbound, outbound and internal email attachment.
Once stored, users should be able to search the archive in a matter of seconds
using a variety of search criteria.
Archiving ensures that corporate knowledge is retained and
stored in an accessible format while protecting the integrity of the database by
preventing uses from altering or deleting files.
Storage Management
According to The Radicati Group, the email client worldwide
installed base is expected “to reach 2.4 billion clients by year-end 2007, and
grow to 3.2 billion clients by 2011.” Radicati also estimates that “worldwide
e-mail accounts are growing faster than e-mail users at an average annual rate
of 8%,” while the average corporate email account receives 18 MB of mail and
attachments each business day. That figure is projected to grow to 28 MB a day
by 2011.
With the growing number of email
accounts and users, email is consuming an increasing amount of network and
storage resource, forcing many organizations to institute strict mailbox size
quotas. For most organizations, email storage or back-up simply involves
maintain individual user's PST files. Organizations that take email back-up a
step further typically invest in traditional tape backup systems, which can be
both time consuming to manage, difficult to search and prone to errors. While
tapes are cheaper than network or appliances, tapes are often damaged or simply
wear out, while humans often forget to change the tape, accidentally delete
files or reformat tapes, or handle the tapes improperly.
Reduce storage costs. Archiving is a more efficient and
cost-effective way to store email files. Hardware-bases solutions provide
centralized storage for all email accounts, which reduces backup time, hardware
requirements and media costs of keeping old email off of mail servers. The
hardware device also eliminates the need to manually change back-up tapes by
automatically indexing all emails and attachments.
Email storage management is also critical when it comes to
compliance, which this paper will address shortly in more detail. Michael
Osterman, principal of Osterman Research, recently said that “Growth in email
storage is the number one problem facing IT managers today. With storage needs
increasing by approximately 35 percent per year, IT managers are faced with
finding the best solutions to manage email volume and meet archiving
requirements for compliance.”
Risk Management
One of the driving forces behind email archiving is risk
management. As the volumes of email continue to increase, organizations need to
find ways to manage the data, as well as the risk. A 2006 article in Wall Street
& Technology reported, “E-mail has gotten so big that it's no longer a mere
issue of personal productivity. Top executives and their companies are being
judged on how they're controlling it, as mismanagement can lead to legal
troubles.”
By archiving all company emails in a single location,
organizations can quickly produce a paper trail that will help resolve disputes
and prevent litigation. An archiving solution can also help to deter employees
from using company email for inappropriate uses while eliminating the need for
users to store email on personal media and the potential risk of misplacement or
theft.
A conveniently accessible and searchable email archive can be
the difference between a quick resolution and a drawn out process of discovery
that can waste significant time and money.
Employee Productivity
According to eMarketer, email volume in the U.S. will reach
nearly 2.7 trillion messages this year, while other studies suggest that workers
spend an average of two hours per day sorting through their inbox. For many
organizations, email is still a major productivity challenge. With many
employees receiving hundreds of emails a day, simply reading, responding to and
searching messages can be extremely time consuming.
A recent study by IDC found that a company with 1,000
information workers can expect to lose more than $5 million in annual salary
costs because of the time spent on unproductive email searches.
Productivity is also impacted when users have to manage mailbox
sizes by downloading and filing emails on their personal computers, creating an
underground archive that is rarely backed up. Archiving emails allows users to
quickly search and find information stored in emails without having to import
old PST files or require tech support to search email servers. Archiving emails
in a central, searchable repository saves time related to search and enhances
competitiveness by giving employees fast access to the company’s knowledge base.
Business Continuity
With the speed of business today, business continuity is
critical. Never before has the phrase “time is money” been more apropos. When
email systems go down an employee leave a company, there are business processes
that can be dramatically impacted. Being able access and search email archives
can save a significant amount of time in replicating information and eliminating
the need to recreate emails and information.
Automatically archiving employee email ensures that
organizations retain access to emails when employees leave, or when hard drives
or network systems crash or fail. Archiving serves a real-time backup for all
email and attachments.
Compliance and Legal Discovery
A recent report by IDC found that global sales of email
archiving solutions increased by 45 percent in 2006 fueled by the need to
satisfy compliance regulations, legal discovery and storage requirements. Email
records are being used more and more to incriminate or protect organizations.
Recent cases such as the Republican Party unable to produce more
than five million emails or Intel's anti-competitive lawsuit with AMD have
demonstrated to IT departments across the country the importance of being able
to quickly and easily access and search email archives. A number of studies
indicate that between 50 and 70 percent of IT departments have been subpoenaed
to produce email records as part of legal action.
Effective email archiving will allow organizations to restore
emails on demand to comply with a variety of industry and government
regulations, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA, the Garmm-Leach Bliley
Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the USA Patriot Act, the Securities and
Exchange Commission and other regulations.
Complying with the new FRCP. In addition, the new amendments to
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure increase the focus of the electronic
discovery process early in court cases. The amendments, which went into effect
January 2007, require that when business records are reviewed for discovery
purposes, the files must include emails. The FRCP moves data management and
retention beyond a simple best practice into a legal consideration that if not
maintained can result in serious consequences for the organization.
By integrating a comprehensive archiving solution that
facilitates data management and search, companies can be better prepared should
they ever be asked for emails as part of a legal discovery process. As a result
they will be able to avoid fi nes, penalties and expensive, time consuming
restores of backup tapes.
Improve Network Performance
Email can be a drain on network resources, particular the
performance of the mail server. The increasing amount of emails are
becoming a burden on users and the IT staff, which is responsible for finding a
solution for the both the storage and protection of the data and the
infrastructure. Archiving email on a dedicated device can eliminate the need to
keep old mail on the server, reduce the capacity for the mail server and prevent
email blockages caused by users going over their mailbox storage limits.
Disaster Recovery
According to Radicati, the global email disaster recovery market
is expected to reach $635 million by the end of 2007 and grow to $887 million by
2011.ix The market is being driven by the need for business and message
continuity, and the increase in security threats and natural disasters.
Traditionally, email is stored in a variety of locations on servers as well as
on individual workstations. Backups are usually performed using tapes or optical
drives, or left in the hands of individual users to archive in ad hoc PST files.
Email archiving can serve as part of a disaster recovery plan to help protect
one of the most important business assets.
No email left behind. A centralized, automatic email archiving
solution provides a consistent way to protect email data, as well as a more
cohesive method for restoring emails in the case of a security breach, system
outage or disaster. While backup tapes and optical drives capture the data at a
specific moment in time in the past, many email archiving solutions capture
information in realtime, allowing organizations to recover email at the point
the system outage or disaster occurred. The ability to quickly and completely
restore user accounts can save organizations significant time and money.
Reduce Load on IT Department
With the growing dependence on technology and electronic
communications, many IT departments are simply overwhelmed with email management
issues. According to Osterman Research, 50- 75 percent of costs associated with
managing email systems is the labor. Email messages that were once typically
20-25KB in size, are now growing to 50MB or more as a result of the growing
popularity of video and digital images. Email boxes are getting bigger, which
means storage requirements and management of email users is increasing.
“Ferris Research estimates that IT staff typically spend 3 to 5
hours per user, per year managing email. The IT cost associated with managing
e-mail is $20 per user, per month. The user productivity cost associated with
managing e-mail is $120 per user, per month.”
User independence. As long as people insist on using email to
store presentations, images, videos and other large fi les, there will be an
increasing demand on IT resources, and conversely the people that manage those
resources. Using a stand-alone, automatic email archive appliance helps to
alleviate the burden on IT departments by reducing the wear and tear on email
services and other network resources. In addition, it allows end users to
resolve a number of email related concerns on their own, such as searching old
emails and restoring accidentally deleted emails. The appliance also eliminates
concerns for storage requirements and the need for mailbox size quotas while
providing administrators complete visibility of all emails, which reduces the
time it takes to search and find files.
Organizational Dexterity
What does dexterity have to do with email and email archiving?
Email was designed as a tool to help improve the way organizations communicate
and do business. It is a tool that allows organizations to be more agile by
quickly sending information as well as responding to requests for information.
In business, email has always been about speed. Unfortunately, with its growth
in popularity, the volumes of email have slowed network resources, handicapped
IT staffs, created numerous corporate risks and made retaining and accessing
knowledge found in emails difficult.
Organizations are struggling to get a handle on how to manage
the information effectively so that data can continue to be used without
impeding personal productivity, as well as the performance of network resources.
Email archiving removes a significant burden from both a
company's human and network resources, allowing people to continue to use email
effectively. Integrating an email archiving solution will create a standardized
way for email to be stored, change poor and/or inappropriate use habits, and
eliminate the need for rogue databases and personal archives. All email can be
searched and accessed, allowing organizations to access information faster, have
more complete information and make better business decisions. Organizations can
also respond to e-discovery requests faster and meet compliance requirements.
Archiving allows businesses to use email as it was originally
designed, and not look at it as an unfortunate, necessary burden.
There's more . . .
There are a number of other reasons to archive, from simply good
business practices to establishing network redundancy. The top ten reasons
listed in this white paper provide what can be considered the most compelling
reasons for investing in an email archiving solution.
As was mentioned earlier, not all email archiving solutions are
built alike. Many may not be able to provide solutions that support the reasons
spelled out in this top ten list. The need for email archiving is clear, and
with IDC predicting that sales of email archiving applications to reach $1.4
billion by 2011, the demand is growing as well.
A solution . . .
Defender by ArcMail Technologies is a
comprehensive email archiving and management solution. The appliance provides
secure, centralized email archiving that reduces bandwidth concerns, helps
organizations comply with industry and government regulations, reduces the email
management burden from the IT department and eliminates the need to store emails
on backup tapes or the mail server by providing up to 12TB of onboard data
storage. Defender also features robust search function, which makes it easy for
users to find email and attachments.
About ArcMail Technologies
Founded in 2005,
ArcMail Technology is a cutting-edge provider
of simple, secure, and cost-effective email archiving and management solutions
for small and medium-sized businesses. The company's ArcMail appliance is easy
to buy, easy to install, and easy to use, and improves the end-user experience,
reduces the load on IT resources, and safely and securely retains the business
information contained in emails. ArcMail provides broad coverage for the SMB
market and is capable of meeting the archiving and management requirements for
an organization with as few as five users up to more than 4,000 users.