Why implement an email monitoring and reporting solution?

There is a lot of buzz in the marketplace lately around email monitoring and reporting, and there are a lot of tools which provide significant reporting and monitoring capabilities. However, they come with a significant price tag, a 200 page installation manual and take a significant amount of time to configure via costly professional services.

So when you are looking for an email monitoring and reporting utility, here are a few things you should consider:

· Does the product combine key elements of reporting, monitoring, and administration in a single solution?
· Some products require days of professional services to install. Is the product easy to install?
· Some products have configuration manuals hundreds of pages long. Is the product easy to configure to your specific thresholds?
· Some products require hours of training and/or a dedicated administrator. Is the product easy and intuitive to use?
· Some products place unwanted loads on server performance. Does the product monitor itself so you can measure & control its impact on Exchange or Lotus Domino environment?
· Some products place unwanted loads on network performance. Is the product architected to be ‘light’ on network traffic?
· Does the product present data in a clear, easy-to-understand visual dashboard format?
· Does the product enable you to share data easily with key stakeholders (senior management, help desk staff, etc)?
· Does the product alert you to issues using real-time data?
· In addition to alerting you to issues, does the product also help you to plan a course of action?
· Does the product provide data to help you plan proactive management tasks to prevent issues from happening?
· Your environment is unique; is the vendor willing to consider custom feature requests?
· Email is critical to your business; does the vendor understand Exchange or Lotus at its deepest levels?


Once you have decided that you need an email monitoring and reporting utility, the next question that comes to mind is ”How will I justify it and how will it save me money?” . Below is information on why email monitoring solutions should be purchased and utilized in the enterprise environments. They:

· Minimize the risk of storage shortage by being able to forecasting future needs on historical trends.
· Enable the Help Desk to purge the email server of inactive mailboxes and thereby recover Email licenses and storage space.
· Empower your CIO to justify budget requests for additional storage, staffing, etc, based on charge back reports showing the importance of your email server.
· Support your recommendation to implement mailbox quotas and/or to deploy an e-mail archiving system with quantifiable data.


If you would like further information on some Exchange or Domino email monitoring and reporting software click on the url’s below:

Exchange Monitoring and Reporting:

http://www.flexnet.com/Exchange_Management_and_Monitoring/Exchange_Management.htm

Lotus Domino Monitoring and Reporting:

http://www.flexnet.com/Lotus_Notes_Monitoring/Lotus_Domino_Server_Monitoring.htm