Ancillary Benefits of Archiving
Whether an archiving system is on-premise or hosted, companies can realize additional productivity benefits. One example: less spam. "We used to get a lot of spam," says Yoon, "about six or seven hundred messages a day. Now they're just not getting through. It's night and day."
This spam reduction was possible because ITG chose to route their e-mail through the Google mail centers before it goes to their servers. But even in scenarios where the archive is taking messages off the primary mail server (rather than intercepting them), users see productivity gains. James Pelt says, for example, "You don't keep your Exchange box loaded with old e-mails." That means everyday e-mail traffic is faster, and backup and retrieval is quicker.
Furthermore, e-mail archives contain what FCS's Harvey calls "a nice little store of intellectual property." According to Smith, up to 90% of a company's IP is contained in e-mail, and being able to monitor keywords, identify threads, and otherwise organize an archive of e-mail makes that IP accessible.
Having all the IP archived and searchable enables companies to maintain business continuity. When people leave the company or change positions, or if there's a disagreement about why a decision was made, it's easy to find the "paper trail" that contains the storehouse of valuable knowledge.
Regardless of the type of solution, smaller businesses can protect themselves from litigation, boost productivity, and ensure business continuity with by choosing an e-mail archiving system that meets their business needs.
How To Choose A Solution
Aside from the choice of on-premises versus hosted, a company should also investigate several other issues when selecting an e-mail archive vendor:
- As always, ask for references to existing customers. "You're establishing a partner who's holding your most sensitive information," says Matt Smith of LiveOffice.
- If you go with a hosted solution, ask for unlimited storage, so you have a predictable cost, advises Smith.
- "Don't underestimate the time and complexity of interrelated components," says FCS's Harvey. "You want this thing to be simple."
- Make sure the solution can scale upward as your e-mail volume grows.
- And last, says Smith, make sure you control your data. With an in-house solution, that's not an issue, but with a hosted solution, make sure to have control over what data gets purged, what gets exported, and so on.
With the right e-mail archiving solution in place, the question of "what to do with all that e-mail" is a lot easier to answer.
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Jake Widman is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who wouldn't mind having an e-mail archiving system of his own.
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