Who's Afraid Of Online E-Mail Archives?Who's Afraid Of Online E-Mail Archives?

A lot of IT pros, according to an information survey. But as compliance and litigation pressures mount, those fears will fade.More and more IT operations are moving to the cloud, from CRM to security to storage to network management. But a recent information survey shows considerable reluctance to embrace SaaS-based enterprise e-mail archives.

A full 80% of respondents that have deployed an e-mail archive chose an on-premises product. Only 15% went the service route.

And when we asked respondents considering a service about their top concerns, 62% said e-mail was too sensitive to entrust to a third party. It's understandable, given e-mail's dominant role in business communication. Today's mail streams carry executive conversations, business strategy, and attachments loaded with sensitive finance, sales, and customer data.

While our survey responses seem to bode ill for cloud-based archives, you wouldn't know it by looking at recent market activity.

Proofpoint, an e-mail security appliance vendor, bought Fortiva, an e-mail archiving service provider, this June. In February, Dell purchased MessageOne, a SaaS provider of e-mail archiving, continuity, and compliance services, for $155 million.

Back in 2007, Google acquired Postini, a SaaS provider of antispam, antivirus, and archiving services. Google paid $625 million -- in cash -- for the eight-year-old company. Microsoft kicked off the trend in 2005, acquiring FrontBridge Technologies, a managed provider of e-mail security and archiving.

Are these vendors headed for a fall, or just ahead of the curve? I think it's the later.

Enterprises are under increasing pressure to manage e-mail properly. That doesn't just mean separating ham from spam. It also means being able to find and produce relevant messages when auditors, investigators (internal or external), and lawyers ask for them.

Enterprises may need to rummage through several years' worth of mail to meet these requests. With a cloud-based service, those messages are stored on disk and have been fully indexed, which allows for much faster searches than restoring backup tapes. Of course, on-premises mail archives do the same thing, but the cloud provides two clear advantages.

First, these services are relatively easy to deploy. In most cases, companies change the MX record to redirect messages to the service provider. The provider copies each message before sending mail to its final destination. Some providers offer a hybrid approach, with a premises appliance that taps into production mail systems and then sends copies up to the cloud.

Second, enterprises don't have to worry about running out of space. It's up to the provider to ensure that sufficient disk and supporting software (operating systems, databases, etc.) are available. Of course, that storage isn't free, and potential SaaS customers will have to keep a sharp eye on utilization to budget appropriately.

I also think worries over the sensitivity of e-mail will become less pressing over time. Consider the success of SaaS vendors in the CRM, HR, and security markets. These providers also are entrusted with highly sensitive information and -- so far -- have maintained decent controls. Concerns over the privacy and security of e-mail will carry less weight over time.

That said, the cloud isn't a panacea. Service providers screw up, and some go broke. But it's a viable option in the e-mail archive market, and I'll hazard a guess that over time, that 85/15 split will look more like 60/40.

By the way, full survey results and more will be available in a forthcoming information Analytics report on the e-mail archiving market. Stay tuned.