When it comes to backup and storage, email archiving systems should allow the business to efficiently store and access data whilst adhering to all legal requirements. Ian Lock, storage and backup service director at GlassHouse Technologies (UK) outlines below why it should be at the forefront of the CIO’s mind and suggests that email archiving doesn’t have to be the headache that some associate it with.

As the volume of enterprise data, and in particular email, has continued to grow, today’s businesses face the difficult task of dealing efficiently with ever-increasing amounts of data. To keep primary storage capacity in check, archiving solutions for email are becoming increasingly important.

Demand for these solutions is also being driven by the tightening of record-keeping legislation in the US and EU over the last few years, requiring a broader range of companies to be able to produce email records upon request by regulatory authorities or by customers themselves under Freedom of Information and Data Protection laws.

The increasingly complex regulatory landscape can mean that businesses have to develop siloed archiving procedures to ensure regulations are met. This means that businesses need to research each country’s compliance rules before embarking on an email archiving project.

For example, in Germany and France, data privacy rules are much stricter than in some other EU countries, meaning that not all data can be archived because employees are allowed to store in the workplace personal information that the company is not allowed to access.

Whilst it is important for businesses to keep emails to protect themselves, it is just as vital to ensure that the right data is stored and accessible. Keeping all email communications from an organisation without an intelligent filter can make restoring data like searching for a needle in a haystack! And without a system that provides easy, quick access to important information, companies can easily misplace critical data and the face potential penalties. In fact, in some cases the complexity and cost of discovery can be higher than the cost involved in settling a legal case for noncompliance.

Third party hosted storage

A third-party hosted email archiving service can be an attractive option for small to medium-sized companies that do not have the resources to design, implement and manage their own systems. These services provide an externally-hosted solution which manages all email message flow into and out of a client company’s email servers and stores these messages offsite for long-term compliance and search purposes. The hosted service provider supplies and manages all the archiving servers, application software, storage capacity and backup or replication functionality so that customer data is fully protected.

A hosted service can also help to reduce the complexity of the company’s IT environment, allowing IT managers and administrators to concentrate on business-facing and revenue-generating applications and services.

The other major trend in email archiving is the dedicated email archiving appliance. These appliances take the alternative route — that of keeping archive data in-house, but making the installation and management process simpler for IT departments. Such appliances typically include an industry-standard server and some locally-attached storage, along with embedded software which can be managed through a Web interface. These appliances work in the same way as cloud services — by capturing and storing all ingoing and outbound email traffic, but aim to make the job much less complex.

There are several alternatives available for managing email archiving systems. What is most important is ensuring that the system is effective and the business is compliant with all regulatory laws. 

Ian Lock is a practice lead for GlassHouse Technologies (UK) Ltd. He has more than 15 years of storage, data protection and IT service management experience. In his many years at GlassHouse, Ian has worked with some of GlassHouse’s major financial, telecommunications and legal clients delivering projects which have transformed their storage, backup and server environments.

Before joining GlassHouse, Ian was a Pre-sales and Technical Consultant at Compaq in the enterprise storage and systems management teams, where he was responsible for architecting, designing and implementing storage, backup and enterprise management systems.

Ian’s extensive architecture and implementation experience allows him to clearly articulate and deliver innovative and complex solutions in today’s demanding business marketplace.

Ian holds a BSc Honors in Mathematics from Southampton University.