Recovering deleted emails and locating old business records are two of the most cited reasons for needing an easily searchable email archive. Our latest whitepaper, "Email Archiving: Top Ten Myths and Challenges," discusses some of the top challenges businesses can face when deciding to implement an email archiving solution and what to consider before moving forward.
EEmmaaiill AArrcchhiivviinngg
Top 10 Myths & ChallengesWhite Paper: Email Management
EEmmaaiill AArrcchhiivviinngg
Top 10 Myths & Challenges
ContentsEmail Archiving: Benefits and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Companies Need Archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Archiving Challenges and Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Cloud Archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6More Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Email ArchivingTop 10 Myths & Challenges
Email Archiving: Benefits and ChallengesIn 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first email that would be recognizable to us today. It used the familiar '@' sign to address1a specific user at a specific domain. Just as the first wheel led to the first traffic jam, so the first email created the needfor email archiving. Even today, most organizations use their email servers as an ad-hoc archive but this approach is nolonger a viable long term solution. One reason is that there are simply more emails now than ever before. Today there are1.4 billion email users worldwide and this is set to increase to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. Nearly a quarter (24 percent)2belong to corporate users. Worldwide email traffic totals 247 billion messages per day.
Another reason is that email has become an indispensable business tool. Business users spend about a fifth of their time(19 percent or one hour and 17 minutes per day) sending and receiving emails. They deal with an average of 108 business3email messages a day. Because email is so central to business, a large proportion of a company's institutional memorylives in its email archive. Storing, managing and searching that archive is now a core business requirement. The cost offailure is high: losing arguments, losing law suits, losing jobs. Email servers alone cannot cope with long-term storage ofvery large volumes of email and attachments. Companies need a more robust, flexible and powerful approach.
Companies Need ArchivingWe surveyed 111 email managers to find out their views about archiving. In some areas, the results were not surprising.For example, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) thought that archiving was important and only three percent thought it wasunimportant or irrelevant. Ask a shoe maker whether leather is a good material and you'll get a similar response. In otherareas, the results were somewhat unexpected. For example, we thought that regulatory compliance would be a majormotivator for people to use an archiving solution but just a third (29 percent) of respondents agreed.
Some of the results were astonishing. Despite agreeing that archiving was important, only a few companies (27 percent)had actually deployed a dedicated archiving solution. Leaving email on servers and backing up those servers was, by far,the most popular approach. Email managers want to come to the archiving party but nobody wants to stay and clear upafterwards.
Archiving method currently in use Percentage of respondents
None 15%
Store email on the server 8%
Regular back-ups 42%
In-house archiving 21%
Cloud- or internet-based archiving 6%
Other 7%
1-First email: http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html2-Email traffic: http://www.radicati.com/?p=3237
1Email ArchivingTop 10 Myths & Challenges
We asked email managers if they had ever had to search for old emails and why. The main reasons were access to businessinformation, HR requirements and recovering deleted emails.
Reasons for email search Percentage of respondents
For compliance purposes 29%
As part of an internal HR investigation 40%
For legal discovery 19%
To locate business records / contacts 59%
Recover deleted emails 49%
Other 10%
Archiving Challenges and ... [download for more]
