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EMAIL - A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 6, Issue 4 - May 2006

Email is undoubtedly the business application of the Internet - and a double-edged sword. It can cut for, and against, the user. On the plus side, email has become an essential part of the whole business process, driving communications within organisations. At the same time, it is often employed to underpin contractual negotiations with customers, wherever in the world they may be located.

Indeed, the very ability of many organisations to compete in today's markets has been greatly enhanced by the use of email - because speed of response is an absolute and email delivers exactly that. In many ways, it has become the lynchpin of all successful operations. You only have to look at its global penetration to see what an impact it has made. In fact, it is estimated that around 60 billion emails are now sent and received worldwide every day.

And that's where the minus side comes in - the self-inflicted wounds of our growing reliance on those instant messages, which is seeing email systems creaking at the seams. Meanwhile, storage costs are eating away at corporate IT budgets, to the point where it is estimated that the costs of storage are now many times that of the hardware and software combined.

Certainly, the ease of use and lack of checks associated with this ubiquitous communications tool have been a major contributor to its success - and one reason, it would seem, why there has been a widespread reluctance to put mechanisms in place that ensure email is properly controlled. Yet sometimes things can go badly wrong and prove costly in the extreme.

What's more, growing legislation means email is now a legally recognised electronic document in UK courts. And that has no put the weighty burden on organisations to control, organise and archive both structured and unstructured email data in order to comply with existing and new regulations. Failure to do so could mean costly litigation and fines - and even, in some circumstances, a prison sentence for senior directors.

So how can you effectively manage your email to improve availability, drive down costs and deliver seamless data archiving for compliance? The process is expensive and time consuming. One answer would be to have a suitable software solution in place, around which effective procedures have been built.
In our feature on email archiving in this issue (page 12), we speak to a number of vendors about their perceptions as to how they can make the email environment a safer and more compliant one, in a world where the volumes of emails will only be heading in one direction - and at some pace.