Archive solution implementation dictates that the project management team balance 3 variables:

1. Archiving solution still facilitates the day to day business operations, in-line with the company mission.
2. Meet regulatory requirements and minimize turn around time for legal document requests.
3. Provide flexibility to maintain service level agreements with email user community.

With his paper on “Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products“,  Stephen Foskett displays obvious experience in the archiving arena.  This paper is a result of Stephen working as a vendor independent storage consultant to end users for over 10 years.   Stephen has also been a feature writer for industry publications, such as TechTarget’s “Storage Magazine“. He has taught full day seminars on storage virtualization.  In 2008 Microsoft awarded Stephen Foskett MVP status in the area of File System Storage.

Stephen’s document explains essential attributes of email archiving solutions. These attributes aid in managing mail server growth, meeting compliance standards, and managing system usage.  Archiving solutions must consider that it is still “business as usual” with email service level agreements (SLA).  The IT department must still ensure email systems are continuously running throughout the entire archive solution implementation.

The biggest question becomes “Why Archive Email“? Some of the variables in answering this question include:

1. Considering the management of mail server growth. This falls into the responsibility of the IT department, who usually wants to control email system data growth.  With storage and capacity in mind, key features for the IT department are stubbing and compaction of files.
2. Provide an archiving infrastructure that addresses compliance and legal requests for information.  Decisions must be made for legal or business needing a record of email. So considerations for email record completeness and being able to do searches are extremely important.
3. Managing system usage goes to the heart of considering everyday business operations. Along with this management and users will want enhanced access to historical information. So the archive system should provide flexible, easy to use interfaces

Up front, the archive project team must define a complete requirements document to include:

• Business Requirements
• Response time processes for legal requests for information
• Regulatory Compliance
• Cost Reduction
• Balancing functional against technical requirements
• Considering whether the system will interface with clients
• Classifying messages based on organizational requirements
• Managing long term growth storage capacity
• Balancing performance with scalability

Other questions addressed in Stephen Foskett‘s document are:

• Can the archive solution guarantee every message is captured?
• Will Legal be happy with the output?
• Does it single-instance entire messages or attachments separately?
• What type of audit/access logs does it produce?
• Can it create chain of custody reports? Bates numbering?