Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Choosing the Best Email Archiving Solutions for Your Company

Companies need to abide by a host of regulations to remain the right side of the law. One of the most important rules they are required to obey is that of archiving emails. Having an email archiving system in a company is very important because it ensures your company’s integrity and retains data for future use.

However, with many email archiving solutions available today, which one should you choose?

Choose the Solution that Meets Your Compatibility Requirements

If your company is quite large, you may have multiple servers, and maybe more than one email platform. Before choosing an email archiving system, make sure that it can accommodate growth. Another aspect you should check for is the longevity of your archiving system. Email platforms and software are ever changing, you need to make sure that your email archiving system is based on open standards.

Make sure that the system can work smoothly with user accounts

Most email archiving solutions use browsers to access the store email, much like webmail. Having a clear and scalable provisioning system will make it easier to add and remove user accounts. In agile businesses, this is an important consideration, especially if you use temporary or contract staff.

The system should be robust enough to maintain the integrity of emails

The email archiving solution you use needs to be secure enough to hold up against hacking threats. Emails should be stored safely and protected from any changes. Threats come from within, and without, so the security provisions need to protect your data from both. Email archives are great for preserving information, but a robust system needs to protect their integrity too.

The system should be simple to understand

When using the email archiving system, you should be able to become familiar with the interface without having to go through hours of training. Good software is easy to understand and logical in its operation. It should be accessible and easy to use.

Look for systems that offer search features

Because email correspondence is used heavily by business, your company may have hundreds of thousands of emails. If you want to be able to sift through them quickly and efficiently, it should have a simple search feature. Working much like a search engine, it makes the finding of specific information much faster.

The system should flag messages by set criteria

Companies that handle delicate information (e.g. banks and government offices) require certain flags to be set to ensure that employees aren’t sharing data with the competition or other third parties. Flags are also useful in speeding up your email search because you can type part of the keywords you need, and have the system search for you.

These are just some of the questions that will arise when you’re specifying email archiving solutions. They are the less obvious questions, ones that aren’t generally covered in other articles. They are provided in the hope that they make what is a huge job, that little bit more manageable.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Things To Consider In A Beach House Plan

Beach house plans are considered more flexible given the fact that they are often used during a specific time of the year, and for a specific purpose. Since these houses are not used for

permanent living, you need to consider certain aspects when commissioning your beach house plan.

Where to Start?

You will need house plans if you are planning to build a home with scope for future modification. This is not a difficult job as long as you are paying attention to certain basic details. When commissioning a beach house plan, it is important to evaluate how it will be used.

You will probably only need a basic plan if you are planning to use it sparingly and have no plansto rent it out. If you’re planning on renting, then you also have to consider the demands of your target market, as well as your own.

Floor Plans

If you walk along any beach you will probably notice that the beach homes are built in a range of interesting styles. Because they are holiday places, there is often a sense that you can be more creative with the design to maximize the natural features. Probably you will want plenty of light, expansive views, and possibly solar power.

You can add flexible floor plans according to the space available. A single bedroom with attached bathroom and a foyer will be often be enough for a small house by the beach. You will, however, need multiple rooms if you are planning to rent it out to vacation travelers.

A large family room might also be required that could double as lobby area. You can also add a swimming pool if you have space and the moneyas this will greatly boost the value of the property.

Future Needs

A good house plan will take care of your future needs as well as present ones. Beach houses are often looked upon as temporary. You can, however, use a plan that could help you in meeting future residential needs. It is always a good idea to add a spare bedroom and bathroom even if you do not have any intentions of moving in permanently or renting the property.

This will help you to rent it more easily if you want to in the future. There will be countless options of improvement if a house plan offers you the required flexibility. Beach houses remain a hot property if you have built them at a popular tourist spot.

While it’s difficult to predict the future, it’s possible to have an idea of where you want your life to lead. For example if you’re planning on having more children, retiring early, going traveling, renting it out or using it as a pension, you can factor these future needs into the plan. Doing it early will allow you to factor in potential changes, and save time and money in the long run.

A beach house is both a luxury and a necessity for some. Our lives are becoming more hectic by the day and we often need time out to recharge our batteries or leave the world behind for a while.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Managed Email

There is no doubt, for a huge number of businesses, the hosted model and managed email is the ideal solution. For a relatively small amount of money per month, a business can relinquish all responsibility for managing their own messaging infrastructure, compliance and all that it involves.

Whether you use a hosted solution or not, there is still a significant challenge in corporate email and that’s inbox sizes. With email being the number one method of communication, it’s all too easy to fill even the most generous mailboxes relatively quickly.

With a hosted model, that can cause problems, as the mailbox is generally set in stone until you negotiate larger ones or upgrade your contract. As email becomes more popular, mailbox space starts becoming an issue.

There was a time when a one megabyte email inbox was more than enough. Now the average user needs at least a couple of hundred at the very least. Even the free email providers offer several gigabytes storage nowadays.

Even in situations where email misuse is adequately controlled, many business documents can take up many megabytes. The average CAD drawing, financial spreadsheet or product brochure can be several megabytes on their own.

To add to this, our habit of using email as data storage is a big problem. While Microsoft sought to alleviate the burden from Exchange with SharePoint, and other software manufacturers brought out their own document servers, we still store stuff in email. Over time, this space demand grows until the mailbox is full and it won’t work until space has been freed.

While it can be argued that this is a habit that we must learn to break, it’s still something managed email users and providers have to deal with. The cost of managing data on a large scale is often one of the compelling reasons a business moves to the hosted model in the first place.

Many businesses limit the size of emails that can be sent within its infrastructure. However, with our increasing dependency on email for communication, space is still an issue. With Exchange 2010 there is no inbox size limit, the only constraint is the storage medium used. While hard disk drives are larger and cheaper than before, they are still an expense.

None of that takes into account e-discovery and compliance though. Compliance is an operational necessity, but not a real time one. It’s an unfortunate situation, but unavoidable. Every business has to comply with differing requirements depending on the type of industry you’re in.

Compliance law came into being a number of years ago but are continually revisited and updated as technology changes. They stipulate that all corporate email should be retained and archived securely for a set period of time. This adds considerably to managed email space requirements. All email inboxes have to be indexed, compressed and retained securely.

That includes attachments, forwarded mails, mail chains and other size intensive emails. So not only does the managed email system have to cope with live mailboxes, it also has to be able to cope with archives.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

What is a Checkbook Management System?

A checkbook management system or money management enables you to keep track of every transaction in your account. This system can help you in overcoming the flaws in your checkbook management. Joint account holders can significantly benefit from this system because the working of a joint account calls for cooperation between partners which can be difficult if you are used to tracking your account manually.

It is sometimes difficult to keep track of receipts and account for every expense. An online checkbook management system comes in handy in these situations. Under this system, you and your spouse can create a login on a website that offers an online checkbook management system.

This will monitor the transactions of both you and your partner and will require both of you to enter details of receipts, transactions, and other documentation into the system. Both of you will have the login and password of the online tool thus enabling you both to track the account balance.

How to Keep Track of Your Account?

Some online tools provide a simple method of tracking your account while others have a detailed procedure. It is recommended to use an online tool that offers you ease of use and simple operations. You can start the process by signing up on a website that offers this service.

Some tools are available for download and can be used on computers and phones. You can use web applications as a preferred tool for managing joint accounts as they offer constant updates and provide significant data security.

You can start with entering the data about the total amount in your joint account and the amount that you and your spouse draw every month. Both of you will have access to this tool and you can use it to enter details after each transaction. The tool will create a database of each payment along with details of the remaining balance. This is the most basic feature of the online checkbook management tools.

Advanced features include graphical representation of account balances, history of payments and transactions, reports of credit and interest rate accumulation among other things.

Using this tool will remove the chances of miscounting anything as both of you will have quick access to balance sheets at any time of day or night. You can use this feature to find a complete history of transactions between two set dates.

Joint accounts offer financial security in the long run and you can use online tools to ensure that both you and your spouse on the same page in managing your money. Using technology to counter potential argument flashpoints is a good thing in my book.