Research reveals majority of firms lack formal e-mail policies

A new study by the Radicati Group, conducted by messaging expert Masha Khmartseva, has fuelled mounting concerns that the majority of organisations have no infrastructure or support system in place, in which to store and archive important unstructured business-critical data, namely e-mail.

In addition, the research highlights the significant underlying risks posed by the lack of corporate e-mail management and storage solutions to organisations, in relation to legal and regulatory compliance issues, which could result in unnecessary financial risk.

The report, conducted in May 2003 and entitled "E-mail Archiving Market Trends, 2003 - 2007", places great emphasis on the importance of corporate e-mail archiving. E-mail archiving is defined by Radicati as "a long-term, interactive storage of e-mail (both messages and attachments) in a separate file store, with easy search and retrieval capabilities".

Local KVS distributor ICL`s Kethan Parbhoo says following the many corporate scandals during 2002 and the subsequent high-profile lawsuits against organisations unable to provide sufficient auditable e-mail trails for evidence purposes; key market drivers for implementing e-mail archiving solutions have included organisational concern over e-mail storage, regulatory compliance and internal, legal policy compliance.

"This is enabling companies to retain copies of all e-mail for specified periods of time in line with data protection and security legislation and protection from future lawsuits," he said.

The research findings reveal that out of the sample size of 105 global corporate respondents, including CEOs, presidents, directors, network architects and other executives, 83% of those respondents noted the importance of e-mail archiving to their companies, while 63% reported a lack of formal corporate e-mail archiving policies, leaving the corporate knowledge base of information vulnerable to possible deletion and increased costs associated with the growth of e-mail storage requirements.

According to the report, a typical e-mail account sends/receives about 7MB of data per day, the equivalent of 140GB of data a month, within a company of 1 000 e-mail users. As e-mail servers were not designed to store such large amounts of data, servers are being put under enormous strain and reliability of Exchange is being compromised due to the sheer volume of e-mail received.

Parbhoo said KVS`s award-winning Enterprise Vault solution is well documented for its ability to control and manage enterprise-level e-mail storage requirements, archiving and retrieval issues associated with corporate data held within a company`s e-mail system. Enterprise Vault reduces operational and administrative costs associated with the on-going management of e-mail quotas and enables organisations to cost-effectively retain e-mail and associated documentation to adhere to legal and compliance regulations.

Masha Khmartseva, senior analyst, The Radicati Group, commented: "The need for regulatory compliance will become more prevalent across a larger number of industries worldwide as content filtering and e-mail archiving markets become more interconnected, in respect to internal policy compliance of documentation. We see the growth of this market fuelled by the spiralling growth of the number of e-mail accounts and e-mail traffic, as well as greater awareness of the problem. KVS is the market leader in this field and the next few years will prove telling as companies stimulate increased market demand and adoption."

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Additional findings from the report included the key feature functions that customers look for when purchasing an e-mail archiving solution. The influencing factors included:

* Guaranteed preservation of e-mail;

* Advanced full-text search and retrieval capabilities;

* Fast speed of access to data and rapid response time;

* User-friendly and non-obtrusive interface for users; and

* Reputation of vendor.

According to the Radicati Group, the discrepancy noted by respondents relating to the importance of e-mail archiving coupled with the lack of implemented e-mail archiving policies, will result in a significant increase in market demand of such tools over the next few years, fuelled by regulatory compliance issues across all vertical industries within the US, Europe and Asia/Pacific. Radicati also predicts that the number of worldwide corporate e-mail mailboxes will reach 421 billion by the end of 2003 and believes the market for e-mail archiving vendors to reach over $126 million by year-end 2003.

A full copy of the report entitled, "E-mail Archiving Market Trends, 2003 - 2007", can be purchased directly from The Radicati Group, Inc.