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.

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