The document discusses key differences between in-house, hosted, and managed email archiving solutions. It covers differences in areas like completeness of archives, integration capabilities, handling of content types, legal functionality, search and e-discovery features, and end user experience. The document is intended to help organizations understand their options when selecting an email archiving solution.

2. Email Archiving Solutions: What’s The Difference? Stephen Foskett Director, Data Practice

3. Email Archiving: You’ve Got Options: Type of Archive Manage Mail Server Growth IT wants to control email system data growth Key features: Stubbing and compact storage Provide Compliance and Legal Hold Legal or business needs a record of email Key features: Completeness and search Manage System Usage Management and users want enhanced access Key features: PST ingestion, flexible interfaces

4. Email Archiving: You’ve Got Options: Location and Purchasing Model In-House Need to purchase software and hardware Invest in personnel to manage solution Hosted Located outside – a specialized system built for you, often close (network distance) You often must pay for software and hardware Includes day to day management services Managed Service Located outside – often very far away Part of a larger system providing service to many Includes day to day management services

5. Key Technical Differences: Completeness How Complete Is the Archive? Can it guarantee that every message is captured? The “double-delete” problem Gateway vs. scheduled sweeps vs. journaling vs. log shipping Does it Record What People Do? Capturing what users do with a message (read, file, ignore, forward) is tough MAPI sweeps vs. log shipping

6. Key Technical Differences: Integration Can it Ingest an Existing Mail Store or PST File? Pull in pre-existing content from mail server How hard/expensive to ingest PST content? Will it retain the user’s folder structure? Warning: You have to flag this stuff as possibly incomplete and perhaps even unreliable! Can It Handle Multiple Email Systems? Multiples of the same type Heterogeneous systems (Exchange, Notes/Domino, UNIX, Apple)

7. Key Technical Differences: Content How Does It Handle Non-Message Content? Attachments, calendars, tasks, contacts Email-specific vs. generalized (SharePoint, IM, filesystems, databases) Can It Do Single Instancing Or Deduplication? Does it single-instance entire messages or attachments separately? Block deduplication can be added to the storage What about single-instancing in general archives?

8. Key Technical Differences: Legal Will Legal Be Happy With the Output? What type of audit/access logs does it produce? Can it create chain of custody reports? Bates numbering? How secure is the back end? (Encryption, SAS70 audits) Is Litigation Hold Functionality Integrated? If the archive supports litigation hold, how granular is it? (Object, message, folder, user, mailbox, mail store, etc) How flexible is the hold function? What about multiple holds?

9. Key Technical Differences: Search How Is the Included Search and e-Discovery? Try out the search in ways you might use it Consider a real e-discovery request from legal Can it search across mailboxes or repositories? How quick and complete is the search function? Can It Integrate with Third-Party Tools? Can you plug in your own enterprise search or e-discovery tool or does “integration” mean “export”? What about account/access control, reporting, logging, and audit tools?

10. Key Technical Differences: End Users What Will End Users Think Of It? Client integration – what will they see? (search, toolbars, plugins, software install) Web clients – Does it integrate with webmail? Off-line access – What happens when users are on a plane? What if you lose connectivity? Mobile client use (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, iPhone, Symbian)

11. What Do You Require? Architecture – Configuration and capacity How will the system plug into your architecture? Capacity – mailboxes, storage, activity Performance and scalability Business Requirements – Usability What business needs are served? What features do users, the business, and legal need? Technical Requirements – Functions Mail server specs – OS, mail system Client specs – OS, clients, mobile, web