E-Mail Archiving From A-Z

E-mail archiving as a service makes a lot of sense, especially if a smaller business customer has limited physical space or capability to implement a full-blown archiving solution. A SaaS solution also takes the data off-site, which is a plus for companies concerned about disasters and data loss. For solution providers, it's a one-time sale that brings in recurring monthly revenue.

The Fortiva Archiving Suite from Fortiva is e-mail-archiving software that's accessible via a Web-browser. Users log in to their company's site with Fortiva to access all archived messages. It supports only Microsoft Exchange, but also integrates with Windows Active Directory, making management a bit easier. Fortiva targets midmarket customers with 1,000 to 25,000 e-mailboxes.

Fortiva uses journaling to automatically archive all messages. Attachments are converted to small .HTML files. Fortiva also has a policy engine that can define retention policy and enforce it on all archived messages and allows the IT staff to customize policies as needed.

Another SaaS product CRN Test Center engineers looked at was the archiving solution from MX Logic. The product is split into two offerings: the MX Logic Archive Storage Control and the MX Logic Archive Compliance Control. The Archive Storage Control product is the basic archiving service. The e-mail server journals all messages and writes to MX Logic's servers. For a few extra dollars a month, customers can choose to have the Archive Compliance Control solution, which adds on a compliance-monitoring tool to the basic service. The compliance-monitoring component allows the IT staff to define business rules that are applied to messages. The rules identify messages that violate policy, such as inappropriate language.

MX Logic makes downloading archived messages simple. The messages are downloaded to the desktop as a Zip file containing individual .EML files, which can be imported into an e-mail client, such as Thunderbird, Outlook Express or to a text editor.

MX Logic supports a variety of mail platforms, as long as it has the ability to turn on journaling, including Exchange, Domino, GroupWise and mail servers running on Linux. MX Logic charges a flat monthly fee per GByte per user, but the final allocation can vary, according to the company. In addition, on the anniversary of the contract, the storage quota increases.

Iomega took a different approach to the e-mail-archiving space. The San Diego-based company handles branding and sales for an e-mail-archiving solution from Postini, which complements Postini's OfficeScreen suite of e-mail security and antispam software offered as a SaaS. The archiving add-on, Iomega OfficeScreen Managed Message Archiving Option, can be configured to archive inbound messages, outbound messages, or both, and can track domain traffic. The Iomega OfficeScreen ManagedE-mail Security and Spam Defense (Powered by Postini) also offer reports so that the IT staff can examine archive statistics.

Next: More Software Solutions