Email Archiving Solutions: What’s The Difference?

Stephen FoskettDirector, Data Practice

Email Archiving: You’ve Got Options:Type of Archive

1. Manage Mail Server Growth• IT wants to control email system data growth

• Key features: Stubbing and compact storage

2. Provide Compliance and Legal Hold• Legal or business needs a record of email

• Key features: Completeness and search

3. Manage System Usage• Management and users want enhanced access

• Key features: PST ingestion, flexible interfaces

Email Archiving: You’ve Got Options:Location and Purchasing Model

1. In-House• Need to purchase software and hardware

• Invest in personnel to manage solution

2. Hosted• Located outside – a specialized system built for you, often

close (network distance)

• You often must pay for software and hardware

• Includes day to day management services

3. Managed Service• Located outside – often very far away

• Part of a larger system providing service to many

• Includes day to day management services

Key Technical Differences:Completeness

1. How Complete Is the Archive?• Can it guarantee that every message is captured?

• The “double-delete” problem

• Gateway vs. scheduled sweeps vs. journaling vs. log shipping

2. Does it Record What People Do?• Capturing what users do with a message (read, file,

ignore, forward) is tough

• MAPI sweeps vs. log shipping

Key Technical Differences:Integration

3. Can it Ingest an Existing Mail Store or PST File?• Pull in pre-existing content from mail server

• How hard/expensive to ingest PST content?

• Will it retain the user’s folder structure?

• Warning: You have to flag this stuff as possibly incomplete and perhaps even unreliable!

4. Can It Handle Multiple Email Systems?• Multiples of the same type

• Heterogeneous systems (Exchange, Notes/Domino, UNIX, Apple)

Key Technical Differences:Content

5. How Does It Handle Non-Message Content?• Attachments, calendars, tasks, contacts

• Email-specific vs. generalized (SharePoint, IM, filesystems, databases)

6. Can It Do Single Instancing Or Deduplication?• Does it single-instance entire messages or attachments

separately?

• Block deduplication can be added to the storage

• What about single-instancing in general archives?

Key Technical Differences:Legal

7. Will Legal Be Happy With the Output?• What type of audit/access logs does it produce?

• Can it create chain of custody reports? Bates numbering?

• How secure is the back end? (Encryption, SAS70 audits)

8. Is Litigation Hold Functionality Integrated?• If the archive supports litigation hold, how granular is it?

(Object, message, folder, user, mailbox, mail store, etc)

• How flexible is the hold function? What about multiple holds?

Key Technical Differences:Search

9. How Is the Included Search and e-Discovery?• Try out the search in ways you might use it

• Consider a real e-discovery request from legal

• Can it search across mailboxes or repositories?

• How quick and complete is the search function?

10.Can It Integrate with Third-Party Tools?• Can you plug in your own enterprise search or e-discovery

tool or does “integration” mean “export”?

• What about account/access control, reporting, logging, and audit tools?

Key Technical Differences:End Users

11.What Will End Users Think Of It?• Client integration – what will they see? (search, toolbars,

plugins, software install)

• Web clients – Does it integrate with webmail?

• Off-line access – What happens when users are on a plane? What if you lose connectivity?

• Mobile client use (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, iPhone, Symbian)

What Do You Require?

•Architecture – Configuration and capacity• How will the system plug into your architecture?

• Capacity – mailboxes, storage, activity

• Performance and scalability

•Business Requirements – Usability• What business needs are served?

• What features do users, the business, and legal need?

•Technical Requirements – Functions• Mail server specs – OS, mail system

• Client specs – OS, clients, mobile, web