Email Archiving

There are two principle roads for archiving emails – “hosted” systems and in-house archiving of emails. In a ‘hosted system’, the email archiving work is the responsibility of a different company. The company connects to your email serve and gets the emails as they are coming in and then they are moved and stored at a different location.

More and more businesses are today interested in an email archiving solution because they need to comply with several government regulations and also follow compliance issues. Email archiving also promotes efficiency and this is another attraction. But the big question here is, what is better? Should a company opt to develop in-house facilities or should it go for hosted services? Most big and middle sized companies need to deal with this issue when planning an installation of an archival solution.

Google offers a solution here and this solution is also among the cheapest as well. Yes, the service offered may not be completely unique, but with aggressive pricing and competitive placement Google hopes to make an impact in the market.

The archiving solution of Google has received positive reviews and its price is good apart from being easy to use. Yes there are advantages, but those planning to use it should also remember that this is not a substitute for a solution that retains emails and so you should not rely on it too much. You need to consider many other issues such as how easy and accessible it is and the legal compliance. When you are using a service that is hosted, security is also a major issue that needs to be considered.

How simple it is to use is not that important anymore because these days the archiving solutions developed in-house do not need the same administrative overheads of solutions of older days. Physically having to search too many tapes in the backroom was hated by all, but thankfully, those days are long gone now. You just need to search emails at your desktop and this feature is not unique to Google or any other service offering email archiving. In a solution that is in-house, you will get all the control and the reporting mechanisms that you want. Plus, it can be more responsive and faster.

The alternative email archiving systems that accommodate all kinds of security needs and budgets are…

Email archiving in-house

Having an email archiving system in house is one way in which you can manage the archive. This is good in cases where security is a concern. In such a case, the company will own the servers and the software for archiving the email, and managing data in-house.

But set ups like this are expensive and so, only the biggest companies may be able to afford this.

Hosting services and email archiving

Smaller companies may opt for an outside service for hosting as this often is cheaper. This is a better option because the developing the archiving solutions in-house may be difficult for them.

All the customer will need is a VPN connection and he can connect to an offsite provide or to you. All incoming emails will pass through the VPN and they will get indexed and stored. And the best news is, the customer does not have to buy anything – software or equipment.

A hosted model’s main concern is of privacy as for communications, the customer has to depend on a third party – but very few companies are worried about this.

Email archiving – the hybrid model

Lately there has been a compromise formula between the two approaches that have been described above. This is the hybrid model. Here the internal IT people manage the mailboxes, but the archiving is done in another place which is off site.

In a hybrid model, the customers are able to manage own servers for archiving and even encrypt the emails. The other party is responsible for just the storage. The email is sent to the location in an encrypted format.

This hybrid model has its advantages that allow local management of mailboxes and the users are also able to search the archives fast since the servers are within the company itself. The storage costs are also reduced. However, there is limited scope for disaster recovery when it is moved to another location.

A hybrid system is quicker when it comes to setting it up and this is another advantage. On the other hand, building the system in-house would have taken a lot of time. It may sometimes take months for it to be ready after the testing is complete. On the other hand, it just takes 4 to 6 weeks for the hybrid system to be installed.