E-Mail Server

While more than half of small companies in the United States do not currently have an e-mail archiving system implemented in their organization, one company is making a case for why they should.

 

That company, Massachusetts-based Ipswitch (News - Alert), delivers communication and collaboration tools through its IMail Server without the high acquisition and ongoing administration costs of systems designed for large enterprises. The IMail Server provides solid, scalable, standards-based e-mail service with Web-based access and administration.

 

In a press release, Ipswitch provides information about a recent survey conducted by eMediaUSA, on behalf of GFI Software, of 421 small and medium business IT executives, which says one in four companies relies on end-users to manage e-mail archiving on their own.

 

For those companies using an e-mail archiving solution, 35 percent rely on end-users to maintain their own e-mail archives, another 35 percent use an in-house solution to archive e-mails, and the remaining 33 percent use tape backups.

 

Twenty-one percent of those SMBs interviewed believe they are not impacted by compliance regulations. Other reasons given for not using an e-mail archiving solution included, having no budget, e-mails are stored on the mail server, and the company is too small for an archiving product.

 

According to Ipswitch, SMBs use e-mail just as much as their business counterparts, but they seldom have IT staff dedicated to manage e-mail applications.

 

On a positive note, Ipswitch says the study said more than half of those using an e-mail archiving solution had a positive experience, 36 percent of respondents consider e-mail archiving important and 23 percent consider e-mail archiving “very important.”

 

The study also says 47 percent of respondents have been required to search for e-mail because of compliance purposes; 29 percent indicated that it takes less than an hour to find an e-mail from 15 months or longer; 25 percent archive e-mails indefinitely; and 21 percent keep them six months to a year.

 

Nearly 40 percent of SMBs feel that lack of awareness about e-mail security has impacted their security and they are still trying to understand how to deal with the e-mail laws in terms of retention and discovery.

 

Ipswitch says when looking at the potential offerings in the marketplace, SMBs should keep in mind considerations such as ease of deployment and the ability to securely search an archive. The company says SMBs must be able to retain, search, preserve and produce messages when requested. And, installing and maintaining an archiving solution must be easy, or the benefits will be outweighed by the operational headaches.

 

Ipswitch’s messaging division offers two archival solutions: MailArchiva Enterprise Edition and Sonian Hosted Archival Systems. MailArchiva is an installed e-mail archiving system for companies of all sizes and works in conjunction with IMail Server to archive all incoming, outgoing and internal emails. Sonian provides an affordable, scalable, reliable and secure hosted e-mail archiving service for organizations of all sizes.

 

For more information on Ipswitch’s products, go to: http://www.imailserver.com.