The cloud is the way forward for ubiquitous e-mail access and business continuity

With e-mail being the main mode of business communication, companies and their employees have a zero tolerance of e-mail downtime. This intolerance, coupled with the business need to deliver mobile workers with on-demand access to company e-mail from anywhere, has pushed e-mail continuity solutions near the top of companies` lists of "wanted" technologies.

"We are definitely seeing a growing move towards e-mail continuity solutions that allow companies to give their employees uninterrupted ability to access, send and receive e-mail from wherever they are, using whatever device they choose, and even when the company e-mail server is down. Why? Because uninterrupted, ubiquitous access to e-mail is crucial for business continuity.

"Businesses have become extremely reliant on e-mail. When employees can`t access their e-mails, or are unable to send or receive e-mail, they can`t do their jobs effectively," says Dries Morris, operations director at Securicom, a specialist IT security services company.

According to him, e-mail continuity and disaster recovery systems have begun to converge.

"Archiving electronic communication in terms of legislation and for backup is also a priority for today`s companies, particularly since e-mail has become a default store of critical business information. What we are seeing now is that companies expect an e-mail continuity system to address their backup requirements as well," he says.

Millions of e-mail transactions are exchanged every single day, which means massive volumes of business-critical information, instructions, confirmations and orders are housed in e-mail inboxes and later in e-mail archives.

Against this backdrop, end-users are now demanding direct access to archived messages. They don`t want to wait for an administrator to search through archived e-mails saved on backup servers, or worse, on discs, to access the information they need.

"Delays like this are a spanner in the wheel of business continuity. To ensure business continuity, e-mail archiving and continuity systems must be integrated and they must give users direct access to new and archived e-mail," says Morris.

His view is that cloud-based business continuity and archiving systems are the most efficient and most cost-effective way for companies, particularly small and mid-sized ones, to address these needs. In fact, he believes cloud-based systems could become the standard.

"Archiving and disaster recovery are ideal applications for the cloud because disaster recovery by definition has to be done out of your main location to be effective.

"Furthermore, if you subscribe with a credible cloud service provider, you can rest assured that their facilities are more secure than your office, and they connect to the Internet via multiple routes, so you`re guaranteed 100% uptime.

"What this means is that if your company`s e-mail server shuts down, or you can`t access the mail server because you`re not in the office, you can still access your e-mail as well as send and receive messages via the cloud using an Internet-enabled device of your choice. So regardless of what`s happening on the server or where in the world your employees might be, it`s always business as usual.

"Best of all, you don`t have to buy or maintain backup servers or rent space from disaster recovery outsourcing companies, which is prohibitively expensive for the average small or medium-sized company," he says.

Securicom is well versed in e-mail archiving, having launched the first version of its e-mail storage and recovery solution, MailVault, in 2007. Since then, the solution has undergone a few nips, tucks and enhancements to make it a snug fit with company needs - business continuity being one of the top requirements.

MailVault, a cloud-based e-mail archiving service, ensures business continuity by providing continuous and anytime access to new and archived e-mails via a dedicated Web-interface using any Internet-enabled device.

The solution is fully hosted in the cloud by Securicom at a secure data centre and delivered as a managed service. The solution provides complete and reliable real-time backup of all electronic communication in a central archive that is equal to housing a fully redundant system for e-mail archiving and retrieval, but without the high cost.

Most recently, Securicom included a unique `plug-in` for MailVault. The plug-in integrates with corporate e-mail clients, allowing users to continue accessing and working with e-mails, using their usual e-mail interface, even when the e-mail server is down.

"We`ve made the system as intuitive as possible. Everything that arrives in the inbox is instantaneously stored in the MailVault archives, so users have up-to-date access to all new e-mails, even when they are not connected to, or can`t access, the e-mail server for whatever reason. With MailVault, users also have direct access to archived messages that have been long gone from their inboxes. Using MailVault Plug In, all of this can be done from within their usual e-mail system such as Outlook.

"Our system acknowledges the convergence of e-mail continuity and disaster recovery systems. On top of that, it delivers on the employee`s need for on-demand, anywhere access to company e-mail, new and old. Conventional backup and archiving systems cannot promise ubiquitous access to e-mail or business continuity like this," concludes Morris.