Survey Finds Server Performance the Top Reason for E-mail Archiving.

December 11, 2003

Why are companies archiving email?

A survey by C2C Systems and Osterman Research, Inc. finds that 59 percent of respondents using Microsoft Exchange are archiving to reduce server loads and improve system efficiency.

The survey, sent to about 100 organizations in November, also found that the top three email problems are: increasing back up and restore times, increasing message size, and lack of messaging-related disk space. Although regulatory compliance has been a hot topic in the media, it did not make the list of serious messaging problems, and was the third reason for purchasing an archive product.

"E-mail administrators are currently the primary purchasers of archiving products, and they purchase to improve server efficiency," says Dave Hunt, CEO of C2C Systems. "If someone else in the organization purchases an archiving product, their reasons are usually regulatory compliance or e-policy enforcement. There's sometimes a disconnect between the two parties, but fortunately the right choice of technology can meet the needs of both."

The current demand for messaging archiving tends to be focused on the most heavily regulated industries, such as financial services and health care. But Osterman Research-a market research firm that helps organizations understand the markets for messaging, directory and related products and services-believes that demand for archiving will spread to other industries as well, based primarily on the storage management and other benefits that archiving can provide to an enterprise.

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