IT Organizations Ignoring E-mail Archiving Requirements

8th April 2005

A recent survey by C2C’s Archive One division and Osterman Research found that a majority of organizations are still relying on backup tapes for email retention, don’t have e-policies in place and are not integrating email archiving systems with a storage management strategy.

The March 2005 survey follows up a C2C/Osterman survey on archiving conducted in December 2003. More than 100 companies were polled and, despite the media headlines on compliance and security, results indicated that IT organizations are ignoring email archiving requirements.

For example, regular tape/disk backups are the primary form of managing email for many IT organizations. Out of 107 respondents, 41.1 percent keep backup tapes for 90 days and 30.8 percent keep tapes/disks on a long-term basis. Only 18.1 percent of respondents are using an archiving system, and 9.8 percent are using another type of system.

When asked if the organization had an email and/or instant messaging retention policy in place, 56.1 percent had only an email retention policy, 0.9 percent had only an instant messaging (IM) retention policy, 18.7 percent had both email and IM retention policies — and 24.3 percent had neither policy in place.

“We are shocked that 12 months after our first survey companies still aren’t taking email archiving seriously,” says Dave Hunt CEO of C2C. “Few organizations are putting retention policies in place or planning sufficiently prior to implementation. Policies are still the future and relying on backup tape is still the norm. This slap-dash approach to email retention could expose organizations to entirely unnecessary levels of risk. Has industry learned nothing from previous scandals?”

In addition, only 50 percent of organizations are integrating an email backup or archiving solution with a storage management strategy.

“Despite the skyrocketing costs of storage, many companies are not managing what they have to lower total cost of ownership,” says Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Inc. “Archiving, integrated with storage management, is a key tool that an organization can use to substantially lower the costs of storage and make email systems more efficient.”

However, more organizations are archiving in 2005 than they were in 2003. In 2003, 52 percent of organizations were not archiving email and 28 percent didn’t plan to archive. But today 47.4 surveyed organizations stated that they plan to archive email sometime in the next two years.

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