Why do you need email storage software?
In a world where email is often a company’s principle means of communication, it is not just huge businesses that should use email storage software alongside their mail server. Email is now so popular and widely used, that it is unrealistic to expect network users to maintain their mailboxes in line with small, restrictive quotas. Email storage software allows you to offer virtually unlimited storage to users, while still keeping mailboxes sufficiently compact to ensure Exchange runs quickly and efficiently.
Good email storage software works hand-in-hand with your Exchange server, and allows users to access archived mail as easily as the mail in their mailbox – via the Outlook client, or from a web-based interface.
Centrally controlling email archival through email storage software means you can stop your users being presented with “do you wish to auto-archive now?” notifications, which often results in PST files and the important messages within being spread across various locations on your infrastructure, including network drives and local hard discs.
The implications of not keeping tight control of email storage can be far more serious than the day-to-day frustrations that result from company data being spread around the network in a disorganized fashion. Ever-increasing compliance regulations often require companies to keep detailed audit trails. Failure to meet compliance regulations can have serious consequences, both legal and financial.
Email storage software not only makes it easier to meet these compliance requirements, by providing you potentially unlimited storage away from the core Exchange infrastructure, it also makes compliance far easier to prove in an audit situation. A good archival solution allows you to search across an entire archive – always preferable to trying to find a specific email hidden in an individual mailbox or local PST file.
If email storage in your company is already disorganized, implementing an email storage software solution can even help you to bring everything back under control. Some archive systems allow you to automatically search your entire network for PST files you may not be aware of, and pull them into an archive that you are in control of. Just one user archiving data to a local PST file could result in important information being lost in the event of a hard drive crash. Making sure all of this information is brought back under IT department control is essential, and sure to increase peace of mind.
Once email storage software has been implemented in your organization, you can more easily control the level of data stored in each user’s individual mailbox, resulting in leaner information stores and increased performance. These smaller stores will backup more quickly, and rebuild more quickly in the event of corruption, improving Exchange performance without taking any storage capability from the business.
Email storage software brings many benefits, including increased organization of data, improved performance and ease of compliance.
This guest post was provided by Ben Taylor on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Read more on email storage software.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
