A Little Lesson on Email Archiving
Here are some numbers for you:
- There are 1.4 billion active email users.
- This number is set to increase to 1.9 billion by 2013.
- 24% of these users belong to the corporate sector.
- Daily email traffic is about 247 billion emails worldwide.
- Business users spend about 1/5 of their time sending and receiving emails.
- On average, business users they deal with 108 business emails a day.
Those are some big numbers, that is a lot of data, and the amount of data is growing exponentially Organizations need a form of email archiving, but most solutions implemented use their own email servers. A failure in these systems can potentially result in lawsuits, job loss, and a multitude of other unfortunate outcomes. These organizations need an archiving system that is suited to store this ever increasing volume of emails and their attachments - one that will not interfere with the email server.
Most every email manager believes archiving is a significant piece of their data management solution, but significantly less have actually done something about it, i.e. implementing the system necessary. In addition, compliance isn't as big a driver as one would think, most overlook this problem and simply archive on their own servers and then subsequently back it up. Yet they all have had to go through these back ups for a variety of reasons.
Email managers listed the top reasons they have had to dig through the backups:
- 59% said that they have had to locate business records at some time,
- 49% of managers have said they needed to recover deleted emails,
- and 40% said that they went through the back ups as part of an internal HR investigation.
This lack of actual email archiving deployment is most likely the result of the common misconceptions surrounding email archiving. A proper email archiving solution provides a consistent archive for HR investigation and eDiscovery purposes, a tamper proof data trail for legal reasons, and less strain on email servers resulting from email overload and proliferating attachments. Microsoft Exchange is one of the many mail servers that have issues that could be easily resolved by email archiving. There are a fair amount of limitations on mail storage, limited audit trail, and sub optimal search performance. Thankfully, Sonian is fully compatible with Microsoft Exchange.
Here are some of the major problems organizations face with email, and how hosted archiving can remedy them.
56% of email managers face problems with mailbox quotas and overload. Mailbox quotas are necessary for the email managers to keep data controllable. Yet with attachments being forwarded, revised, and re-sent so often, mailboxes require more data, causing users to find makeshift solutions such as PST files. These files are not easily backed up and pose security risks if they are stored on personal laptops which can be more easily hacked or stolen. Using hosted email archiving, like Sonian, will eliminate the need to crowd email servers and set quotas, all emails can be archived and indexed. Imagine not having the headache of managing so much data in a limited amount of space.
50% of managers don't want to deal with the complications of dealing with setting up an archiving system. The hardware and servers needed for an onsite archiving system can be very expensive, time consuming, and require significant maintenance even after installation. Hosted archiving circumvents all these issues, simply syncing mailboxes to the cloud and eliminating the stresses of an onsite system (and even freeing up IT resources).
Even with a working onsite back up system, finding the needed email or attachment can be a very time consuming process. With a hosted email archiving system the eDiscovery capability leaves the tedious searching and digging in the past.
Hosted email archiving has a lower cost of ownership, reducing the volume of email and improving email server performance. Solutions are quickly deployed and implemented and completely secure, each archive specific to organizations. The numbers don't lie, use a hosted email archiving solution and solve the problems facing your organizations. Learn more, request a free demo of Sonian's hosted archiving solution now!