You Can Send SMBs E-Mail, But You Can't Make Them Archive ItYou Can Send SMBs E-Mail, But You Can't Make Them Archive It

How's your inbox? Full? Overflowing? Bursting? You're not alone. Getting a handle on all that information is a challenge previous working generations never faced. But all those messages stacking up are a symptom of a larger problem -- intellectual property, business intelligence, and required regulatory compliance. And if your business isn't archiving e-mail, it's all slipping away no matter how good your inbox looks.Admitting the problem is the first step toward a cure. Unfortunately, more than half of U.S. small and midsize businesses (53%) don't archive e-mail. That's according to a report released by GFI Software (a provider -- not coincidentally -- of e-mail archiving solutions).

The reasons for not archiving e-mail? The usual culprits that confound growing companies: money (26%) and size (26%), but 30% of respondents claimed they planned to purchase a solution in the future. That rings hollow -- a bit like going to the doctor and being asked if you plan to eat better and exercise more (the road to hell is paved with good intentions?). How much this aspirational archiving impulse drives the predicted 35% annual growth in the e-mail archiving market is up for debate.

The thing about archiving is that it matters much less how you archive than simply that you do archive. There's no shortage of solutions and competing options to choose from, but that can obscure the bigger question: why archive e-mail.

And once past the "IF" hurdle, you can move on to the specifics of how to select an e-mail archiving solution.