Email has become the de facto standard for business communication over the past decade. Instant communication anywhere across the planet, the end of those piles of dispatches we used to have to deal with, transmission of large files as attachments, and a host of other benefits have contributed to explosive growth. But these same advantages created another massive problem: How do you store it all?

Email archiving evolved to answer that question, and a host of vendors now offer products to meet this need. But not all products are the same. Some focus on vertical markets, while others are married closely to specific applications. Still others offer sophisticated search tools, while some vendors go for the lightweight and inexpensive approach.

With so many options available, how do you choose the right email archive package for your own environment? Here are some tips to help you pick and choose email archiving tools.

Start With Core Requirements

There are certain basics that decent email archiving products must be able to provide. This includes storage of email and associated attachments, the ability to decide the retention period for email of various kinds, regulatory compliance features, and advanced search capabilities. If a tool is deficient in one or more of these, it may prove to be more trouble than it's worth in the long run.

"Email archiving software must be able to index all emails by standard text fields, such as To, From, CC, BCC, Subject, and Date," says Dianne McAdam, an analyst at Clipper Group.

She also recommends that companies that may face legal queries for e-discovery of their archive should require full-text and attachment indexing to limit the number of emails returned from a query. A search for all emails from a specific broker, for example, could return tens of thousands of emails. But a more specific full-text index would make it possible to zero in on specific traffic to detect suspicious transactions.

In-House Systems Can Be A Burden

Building or deploying your own system internally may work for some companies. But it is certainly not for everyone. Small to midsized enterprises, for example, would probably do well to avoid such a burden. The last thing that is needed is for an already overworked staffer—or the boss—to be further bogged down in the ins and outs of operating an effective archiving system.

Hosted systems offer a viable alternative. Comprehensive systems are available from vendors, such as LiveOffice (www.liveoffice.com) and Fortiva (www.fortiva.com), which provide advanced systems that are accessed over the Web. The vendor hosts the system and typically sells it on a per-seat basis.

"When it comes time to access their archive for an audit or e-discovery request, organizations may realize that their in-house implementation is not as effective and efficient as they thought," says Alan Akahoshi, product manager at LiveOffice. "The hosted model can provide a comprehensive solution that meets an organization's archive requirements for storage, search, and retrieval."

Thorough Search

Archiving is certainly important. But it is the ability to retrieve that data that separates out the good from the great archiving tools, and search capabilities often act as the best product differentiator. Some offerings can search email attachments, while others can't. Some are faster than others, and some vendors even offer a speed guarantee regardless of how large the archive grows. This ensures companies always have fast, reliable access to their data.

Another important point is to find search tools that allow legal staff to easily search through the archive without help from IT. As the number of legal discovery requests grows and IT departments are bogged down with time-consuming legal searches, this feature will be increasingly valuable.

"Organizations should look at the value of archiving as a knowledge or information management tool," says Akahoshi. "A digital archive with search functionality can be an integral part of an organization's information life cycle model and is an effective method for managing a critical and continuously growing corporate asset—information contained in emails and email attachments."

Don't Keep Everything

One of the biggest mistakes small to medium-sized enterprises make with email archiving is having a blanket retention policy for all users regardless of who they are and what they do in the firm. This often means that companies end up storing far more emails than they need to. Some products, however, make it possible to create multiple, rules-based retention policies. These can be targeted at individuals or groups of users or even message content. As a result, businesses gain much tighter control over how long they hold on to email.

"Closely managing the retention and disposition of messages can ensure compliance while simultaneously reducing risk," says Eric Goodwin, CEO of email archiving vendor Fortiva. "It will also directly impact return on investment by reducing the amount of storage used."

BEST TIP: Outsource

When choosing an email archiving solution, some companies make the mistake of underestimating the time and resources required to manage the archived data as it accumulates over time. According to Osterman Research, labor costs account for 67% of the actual costs reported by organizations that have deployed an in-house archiving solution. This does not take into account the additional storage resources that may be required to accommodate the growth of email. Businesses, therefore, should be cautious not to underestimate what will be required to maintain the archive. If IT resources are overburdened, a fully managed outsourced system may provide the best option.

BEST RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Solution That Addresses Multiple Problems

Some businesses have a single issue they are addressing when they search for an email archive, whether it's legal discovery, regulatory compliance, or email storage concerns. By focusing on just one issue, however, IT staff can find themselves choosing a solution that doesn't meet future requirements.

One common example is a business that selects an email storage management system that allows end users to delete email from the archive. When faced with potential litigation, though, these companies find it difficult or impossible to prove that email wasn't intentionally deleted, despite the fact that they were archiving their email.

"In the worst-case scenario, we've seen businesses that have actually added a second archiving solution to address this unresolved issue," says Fortiva's (www.fortiva.com) CEO Eric Goodwin. "By choosing a solution that solves multiple problems—legal discovery, regulatory compliance, and email storage concerns—you can maximize your ROI."

BONUS TIPS

Back up the archive. Make sure you not only have redundant copies of your archived data in a remote location, but also a practical way to get the archive back up and running in the event of a disaster.

Streamline archived storage. Archive size can swell alarmingly within a short time. To combat this, look for email products that compress data and also store only one copy of an attachment. If the boss sends a 100MB presentation file to everyone in the company, for example, storing only one copy in the archive rather than 100 copies makes a huge difference in eventual archive size.