E-Mail Retention: No Easy AnswersE-Mail Retention: No Easy Answers

High-publicity cases against Enron executives, financial analysts, and companies underscore the role E-mail communications can play in legal proceedings. In some industries, such as financial services, government will soon mandate what type of communications must be archived and for how long. Yet, in day-to-day operations, it's challenging for IT executives and even legal officials to strike a balance between an acceptable level of E-mail archives and available storage space.

A recent survey of 146 IT managers by Osterman Research shows there's room for improvement in archiving practices. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is "needs a lot of work" and 5 is "it needs no improvement," the average response was 2.9. That suggests the IT folks aren't satisfied with their options. The consensus is that only 90 Gbytes of online storage per server is the best practice, while on average companies use 994 Gbytes across all their messaging or E-mail servers. At companies with more than 1,000 E-mail users, that number bumps up to more than 1,800 Gbytes. That's rapidly changing as respondents say their E-mail storage requirements have increased by 36% in the last 12 months.

Three in five respondents say they archive their messaging systems through simple backup, recycling within 90 days. Twenty-seven percent store critical data for more than 90 days. Respondents on average consider holding the data for 33 days to be the best practice. For critical data, 46% of companies rely on users to back up their own material, while 45% put that responsibility on IT staff. An overwhelming majority--82%--say they don't have different levels of backup or archiving for E-mail servers based on different retention requirements for various types of data.

How does your company plan to tackle E-mail and messaging storage this year? Share your archiving plans with us at the address below.

Eileen Colkin Cuneo
Senior Editor
[email protected]

Critical Directive
How is critical messaging data backed up or archived in your company?

Some companies lack the most basic requirement to effectively manage E-mail and messaging retention. One in five of the 146 sites interviewed by Osterman Research say no formal policies exist to ensure that critical messages are captured. And neither large nor midsize companies are major endorsers of paper as a means of archiving critical messages.