Email Archiving

Emailing has become so popular in recent years for personal use and also in case of business communications. Email has truly brought the world closer and we do not need to anymore deal with all those piles of letters that has to be posted. Emails also have to be stored for many reasons – but the problem is, how to store emails?

Email archiving is the answer to this. There are today many vendors offering products that can help a business store emails. But there is a lot of difference between these products – while some of them are for vertical markets, others are meant for specific applications. Then there are those that come with advanced search options. There are also a few that are inexpensive options.

So you see, the options are many and this raises the issue, how to select an email archive tool that is right for you. This article will help you do this.

Core Requirements Of E-Mail Archiving:

Every email archiving tool that is somewhat useful at least should always have some basic features. It includes th ability to store emails and attachments, features of regulatory compliance, its sbility for deciding retention period and advanced capabilities for searching. If you come across a tool that does not have any of them, it is not worth your time to take another look at it.

The solution should be able to index each mail by text fields like To, CC, BCC, Date, From, Subject and others like this.

Companies that are legally bound due to e-discovery of the archives need the complete text and also the attachment to be indexed when a search query is run on the system. A general search query by a source will probably give many results. But a specific index that is full-text in nature narrows it down and focuses on the specifics.

In-House Systems – the negative points

Some companies like to create a system in-house. But this is something that mid-sized and small companies cannot afford both in times of money as well as time. The boss in such a firm already has too much work and this will unnecessarily add to his burden.

Hosted systems are its alternative. There are many vendors who offer such a system wherein the actual archiving is done offshore at the third party and so the business need not develop such a system. This may indeed be a better alternative because there are advantages here when it comes to e-discovery. A hosted model is indeed what most companies today prefer.

Thorough Search

Yes archiving emails is necessary – but perhaps equally important is to retrieve the data and the tool should always have this. Actually, how efficient the search tool is, often becomes the deciding factor for many businesses. Some tools even allow you to search for attachments. There are those that market themselves on the speed of their operations, no matter what the archive size. And so, businesses can access quickly and reliably.

The search tools that allow the legal material to be easily searched for and found and that too without any serious IT support is great. IT departments these days have to deal with more and more legal requests and such work is taking a lot of time, and so, these features will add a lot of value.

Organizations are beginning to realize the value of archiving for information and knowledge management. A digital archive that is searchable is critical in the company’s information gathering system and it is also enhances business efficiency. The information in the emails often become a must have and a search feature in such situations become mandatory.

Avoiding The Necessity To Store Everything

Many businesses (particularly those that are small or mid-sized, but sometimes even the big ones) make the mistake of not having a retention policy that includes clear directives as to what to store and what not to, and in this, they end up storing everything. This is not needed. In some products however, there are rule-based multiple retention policies. This can target groups, individuals and even the content of the message. This allows the business to have a better control on how long they need to store emails.

Retaining and letting go the emails do ensure compliance and it reduces the risks too. And fewer emails that need to be stored mean that the amount of space required also goes down and so the company can save money too.