Exchange Email Archiving

When it comes to electronic information management, determining what gets kept, where it is kept, and how it is stored can be a real struggle.  Large volumes of email transmissions, increased storage limitations, government regulations and potential legal implications have made the need to archive Exchange emails a critical issue for any organization. Exchange email archiving allows organizations to ensure regulatory and corporate compliance and provides broad control over employees' email content. By archiving Exchange emails, organizations can protect corporate data, locate specific content quickly, have a record of important communications, manage the lifecycle of specific data and be prepared in the event of litigation.  Below are a few specific reasons to consider email archiving for Exchange.

Comply with Regulatory Requirements - The advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and assorted market-specific regulations means that you may be legally required to have an Exchange archiving system and retention policy in place. Therefore, the ability to selectively archive information from Exchange mailboxes, PST files, public folders, Notes mail files/databases, Domino servers and user hard drives is essential. With Exchange archiving software, information can be easily moved to a secure location, users can be given access rights when necessary and retention policies can be enforced to purge old or unwanted data at the end of its lifecycle.

Reduce Storage Requirements - Osterman Research reveals that the average email system message store size has increased by more than 25% during the past 12 months for nearly half of organizations. Much of that data increase is the result of growing email information stores. By archiving Exchange email messages and attachments out of the email system into less expensive storage locations, organizations can decrease the mail store limitations and reduce overall storage costs.  

Secure Critical Information - Much of the information users need to do their jobs is usually bound up in email or other information stores. Therefore, message stores are a critical source of information for knowledge management and data mining purposes. Exchange email archiving software can locate critical data within the email system and move corporate records to a central location where they can be managed and protected long-term.

Increase Server Performance and Reduce Back-up Time - Burdening servers with the increasing amounts of email messages that are sent, received and saved drains the overall effectiveness of IT. Server performance slows, back-up times become lengthy and delivery of emails can be hindered. Dealing with inflated email and attachment loads in the email system and on the servers can also deplete administrators’ resources.  By automatically archiving Exchange email messages and attachments to a separate data store, organizations can alleviate excessive server loads as well as administrator workloads and consistently maintain strong server performance levels.

Exchange Server does not offer much native capability for archiving exchange emails, but some features can be used for email archiving in Exchange. The disadvantages of using Exchange’s built-in email archiving capabilities, however, often outweigh the advantages according to Getting Started With E-mail Archiving for Exchange by SearchExchange.com.  According to Brien Posey, Four time recipient of Microsoft’s “Most Valued Professional” Award, “Exchange Server has very limited archiving capabilities, so it can be difficult to implement them effectively. Even if an administrator can make the archiving work to meet the company’s requirements, retrieving individual messages from the archives can be complex and difficult. When a company factors in the need to buy another Exchange Server to handle the archived data, then a third-party archival product or subscription to an archival service may be better options.”

Typically, there are two reasons an organization buys a third-party product to enforce email policies; space requirements (archiving) or legal issues (e-discovery and/or compliance rules and regulations). Regardless of which need is driving your purchase decision, you’ll want to begin by developing an email policy.  There are several other considerations before making your archiving solution decision. 

Check out this handy check list and Getting Started Guide courtesy of SearchExchange.com and Sherpa Software.

Archive Attender- Sherpa Software