How to Achieve Regulatory Compliance with Automated E-Mail Archiving

Choosing a solution

When shopping for an e-mail archiving solution, it's important to assess any potential vendor or service on four key deliverables:

1. Storage capacity

The solution must meet the storage and retention needs required to achieve regulatory or policy compliance, and it should be easily upgradeable as storage and retention needs change.

2. Affordability

A fixed-cost pricing model is ideal, and a solution that requires minimal hands-on management will help reduce the sometimes less tangible cost of time investment.

3. Simplicity

Simplicity of integration, operation and retrieval is key. E-mail archiving should be easy to implement, own and operate. The retrieval of data should be an uncomplicated process that can be modified to suit each company's needs. For example, some solutions require IT administrator access and/or involvement to retrieve lost data, while others can be configured to grant users access to retrieve their own or others' data as needed.

4. Redundancy and reliability

Look for a solution with built-in redundancy, and one with an outstanding reputation for reliability. A hosted service with geographically disparate data centers can provide this redundancy, as well as the value-added benefit of e-mail access continuity in the event of a failure in the main system.

Based on these criteria, the ideal solution is the one that provides the right mix of compliance, ease of use and value-added features that meet the compliance and operational objectives for the business. The bottom line is that the first priority must be to recognize the need for e-mail archiving for compliance, DR and business continuity purposes. It's critical to put a plan into place before it is too late.

Ted Green is founder, President and CEO of Greenview Data. Ted founded CompuView (which later became Greenview Data) in 1980 as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. Ted holds both an MS and BA in Computer Science and a BA in German from the University of Michigan. He may be reached at ted@spamstopshere.com.