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How An Email Archiving Solution Could Be The Answer for You

Peter Sweeney- Waterford Technologies This scenario will sound all too familiar to any IT or HR Manager, the headaches something as simple

Peter Sweeney- Waterford Technologies

This scenario will sound all too familiar to any IT or HR Manager, the headaches something as simple as a group email can create. Email Archiving is the perfect solution, we will tell you why:

It’s holiday season again. The IT manager is not happy. Is it because he hasn’t got to go to Greece for 2 weeks and away from the erratic weather we all love? No, it’s because he knows that when the staff get back, thousands of holiday photos will be circulating on email, filling up his network storage and slowing his email server. Modern cameras can be very high definition and that means huge file sizes.  A set of large 2mb photos sent around the building can build up to a large amount of data if sent to “All”.  What if the “All” email group is 1000 people or 10,000 or more? And they are all going to be added to tonight’s backup!

Unfortunately, the IT manager is doubly unhappy after recently moving to Exchange 2010. Older versions helped him out by keeping a single instance of a file such as a photo, but not now. His mailboxes ballooned by 50% when he moved to the newer version and his expensive disc array is now filling rapidly. It’s a major problem and potentially an expensive one to keep adding more fast discs to his storage array to cope.

Does he ban all photos? What about all the photos that marketing use for brochures? How about removing all photos over a certain size or age, but how does he easily do that?  It’s a real problem that has been facing IT professionals for some time and it is getting worse every year.

And today he has a different issue with photographs. An employee has brought in photos from a social media website showing a colleague in very compromising circumstances and emailed them around. HR want to know who received the email, whether it left the building and and proof of who first sent the email and when for legal purposes.

These are real issues we are asked about every day and there is a solution. They are issues you should be able to deal with easily.  However, without some form of email archiving solution, you won’t be able to.  Instead of worrying about imposing another rule on the use of email just for the holiday seasons, (and Christmas party photos are just as problematic), the use of email archiving software allows you to address the issues raised above easily without impacting on the users.

The best way is to reduce your email storage requirements dramatically by ‘stubbing’ attachments such as large photographs (removing them from messages and replacing them with shortcuts) without sacrificing your ability to access them. They can be moved off expensive storage onto cheap discs attached to the network or into the Cloud. Users get to see their photos if they ever need to go back to them and they don’t cause an issue for the back up or storage. A win win situation.

As far as the HR request about the inappropriate photograph is concerned, you need to be able to easily and quickly search for details in the body of the email and contained in attachments and report and export content if required.  For that you need a complete archive of the email in the business and one that is encrypted and digitally stamped but can be searched in seconds.

The fact is that every company needs some form of email archiving and as the use and value of the information in business email increases, that need is becoming more critical.

For more information on Email Archiving please Contact Us Today.