Business information vendor Captaris has introduced a new version of its e-mail archiving tool that is more scalable and integrates better with the records management module of its fixed content management product.
The newest version of Captaris Inc. e-mail archiving tool, called Exchange Archive Link for Captaris Alchemy, now scales up to tens of thousands of mailboxes—much more than the original version, which was targeted at organizations with 1,000 mailboxes or less.
Exchange Archive Link for Captaris Alchemy, which supports archiving on CD-R, DVD-R, UDO (ultra density optical) and Sony ProData Disc, was formerly known as MailStore for Exchange.
Captaris changed the name after purchasing archiving and records management vendor Information Management Research Inc., which originally developed the product, last year.
Captaris also has added a plain-English rules engine, making it easier for administrators to create archiving rules.
“Its easier than the old method, which required you to use checkboxes,” said Dan Lucarini, senior director of marketing for the Bellevue, Wash.-based company.
“If you want to have a rule that says to archive everything from a specific user to a specific folder, you could create that rule using plain English, and it would be easier to manage later on because its easier to understand.”
Lucarini said the change was made based on feedback from customers that they wanted an easier method of creating rules.
But the most important new feature, Lucarini said, is the fact that it now integrates completely with the records management module of Alchemy, which manages fixed content throughout the information lifecycle via functions like capture, workflow, document and records management, archiving, retrieval and distribution.
“Before, you could put them together, but it wasnt an out-of-the-box integration,” he said. “Now the Alchemy Records Manager retention rules can be applied to the e-mail repository at the same time youre managing things like scanned images and PDFs as records.”
Integration is key, said Michael D. Osterman, president of Osterman Research Inc. of Black Diamond, Wash.
“If you are a financial services company and you have to archive information, it makes a lot more sense to do it in one repository than to have multiple information stores,” he said.
Integration also makes an organizations IT staff more efficient, he said, because it prevents the staff from having to learn new interfaces for different systems.
Where Captaris takes the product next will depend in large part on how customers receive the current enhancements, Lucarini said.
Options include branching out past support of Microsoft e-mail or more automated classification of e-mail.
Another logical move, Osterman said, would be in the step of storage management.
“Archiving today is primarily compliance-focused, but a few years out it will primarily be focused on storage management,” he said. “So the next big step for archiving vendors would be on optimizing server storage.”