More and more companies are choosing email archiving solutions, and for good reason. With regulatory compliance, eDiscovery requests, and legal mandates, it is impossible not to have such a solution in place. However, besides the fact that you require some sort of solution by law, the other key element is one of space. There simply isn’t enough space for companies to store every email that comes in!
Thanks to cloud based archive solutions, data mining and knowledge management has also become a lot more efficient. Gone are the days of backup tapes and praying that there wouldn’t be a power outage. Today, even remote employees can access their email in a safe and efficient manner.
Email archiving solutions also offer the convenience of disaster recovery, which is one of the key reasons as to why it has become so popular so quickly. Clearly, these solutions, which are cloud-based, are so much more useful than any other conventional backup solution. And not just that, it is more affordable as well! Add to that the fact that it comes with lots of extra functions, such as automatic spam removal, and you may wonder why you haven’t made the switch yet yourself.
Yet, for all this convenience, there are a couple of things you have to take into consideration.
On Premise or Hosted?
Your first consideration is which model of archiving you want to use – do you want to purchase a device that keeps all your digital information within your premises, or do you prefer to go hosted, meaning that you need a web browser to access it? While on premise may sound more secure to you, as it means you have full control over it, the reality is that this actually isn’t the case. One spilled cup of coffee could ruin it all. Not just that, it also means that you have to build up or retrain your IT staff so that they can manage it. On site solutions, all in all, are incredibly expensive – and they take up space.
When you choose a hosted solution, all your information is stored on someone else’s server. The company you purchase your solution from is responsible for the maintenance and security of that server. They also continuously back up the information so that, should something go wrong, it remains accessible. Furthermore, everything is encrypted, which means only someone with the right credentials is able to access it.
What Are Your Options?
With an increasing number of businesses relying on cloud-based email arching solutions, providers of these solutions have started to work on making the entire experience bigger and better than ever before. Today, you can fully customize your solution to your personal needs, including in terms of storage space and budget. All systems are now designed to be user friendly and completely seamless. They even have search capabilities and indexing functions. Plus, because competition between providers is strong, you should be able to test out some free trials before you decide to sign up.