Review: Storage Gets SaaSy

Add to that the variety of government regulations dictating an organization's e-mail policies and you have a recipe for disaster.

E-mail is such a critical part of corporate communications that companies can find themselves overspending in order to handle it. One way to address that challenge is outsourcing to a hosted data archiving service.

Stamford, Conn.-based Fortiva Inc. offers Archiving Suite, a hosted, on-demand e-mail archiving platform that's a true Software-as-a-Service solution. The company, which sells its service through resellers, currently manages more than 10 Tbytes of data for about 200 customers. That amounts to a sizable reduction in data center space these customers would have otherwise had to invest in, if deploying their own in-house solutions.

Fortiva's e-mail archiving is only compatible with Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange, and will work with Exchange 2007. The technology takes advantage of the journaling feature in Exchange—the ability to record all of the communications in an organization.

Here's how it works: Fortiva supplies the customer with a device that resides on the customer's network. The appliance catches messages and encrypts them using a key on the device. Aside from the encryption key, no data ever gets stored on the appliance. Messages are passed to Fortiva's network. The result is less data going over the network, and it's a secure solution because there are no data sitting on the appliance.

However, the highlight of Archiving Suite is how it ties in with Microsoft Active Directory. Because of this, users can search remotely archived data directly from Outlook. A folder gets created called Archive By Fortiva. Login credentials are Active Directory-driven.

"Stubbing" is a way the Fortiva system allows for user mailbox management by substituting attachments with links and embedding the link into the message. However, if a message containing an attachment is stubbed and that same attached file is updated, the original stub will not point to the updated file. The vendor is working on improvements for stubbing attachments.

Also important to note, because of legal issues, data cannot be changed after archiving. This means that if a message that is infected with a virus gets archived, that message will remain infected upon retrieval. It is up to the customer to prevent reinfection of a network.

Pricing is based on how much data a customer needs to archive. Fortiva charges a per-user license and bundles storage and data management costs. As a general guideline, for 1,000 to 5,000 users, a company could expect to pay $1 to $2 per user, per month. Again, the pricing depends on storage requirements. Solution providers are compensated for selling the service with an annual recurring fee.

Through the Fortiva Alliance Network partner program, Fortiva assists VARs with a variety of marketing tools, support and joint business planning with channel managers.

Because of the changing policy needs and the deep level of management this product provides, Archiving Suite provides quite an opportunity for VARs. Solution providers will have to work with their clients to weigh the ROI of a SaaS solution such as Fortiva's vs. a traditional on-site solution.