Today the communications in most organizations is dominated by email, both internal and external. As a result of this the way in which email is handled and stored in the organization and by individual users is one of the most resource hungry activities within IT departments.
In addition to the running of the business, an efficient email system is necessary for a number of legal reasons, and it is essential that such a system provides secure storage that is verifiable and enables rapid search and retrieval. The volume of email is increasing exponentially and it is not untypical for a single user to handle several megabytes of messages every day.
Here we will look at how these problems can be addressed by cloud email archiving and specifically at how Mimecast, a forward-looking vendor in the field of email management and file archiving approaches the solution.
The approach is to move important records from in-house storage to a cloud based email archive which is highly resilient. This immediately mitigates risk. Copies of every incoming and outgoing email whether internal or external are made and are also stored in the archive. Any information that is stored on legacy computers and servers is also transferred to the archive.
When messages are received they are encrypted immediately and copied in triplicate, with each of the three copies being stored in geographically different locations as well as in places with different jurisdictions. This also ensures that all the data is secure and tamper-proof and is of adequate quality for legal evidence.
The system is managed centrally with defined legal hold and retention policies. It also enables very rapid and accurate search and e-discovery and supports corporate and legal compliance requirements.
The Mimecast solution is integrated with Microsoft Outlook, which has the advantage of users being able to access their personal cloud based archive using an email interface with which they are already familiar. As they are able to easily recover any deleted email messages, it encourages users to implement improved email management. Data can also be accessed on the go from any Android, Windows, BlackBerry and Apple smartphone or tablet.
The solution is effectively bottomless, in that it is virtually infinitely scalable, which means that there is no requirement for future capacity planning. Budgeting is also easy as the system is priced according to the number of users.
According to Mimecast by 2014 at least half of all large enterprises will no longer allow email users to retain personal archives. The future is in the cloud.
