Pelz-Sharpe Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Defining e-mail archiving versus e-mail management

29-Jan-2008

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Industry Standards

Terminology in the content technology business is a tricky thing to deal with: different interpretations of the same label can leave buyers confused, and mis-sold. An area of the content technology business that we will be covering in more detail through 2008 is that of e-mail content. So its a good idea to start our coverage with some basic definitions. You're welcome to disagree with them, but they stand as the CMS Watch way of viewing the world.

E-mail Management provides tools to share mail, to trigger business processes, and to safeguard e-mail as a record throughout its lifecycle.

E-mail Archiving provides long term storage capacity and management for e-mail systems, along with simple tools to control the retention and destruction of e-mail.

Neither set of technologies is a full solution in itself. You can combine them for a full solution, yet in practice the two are seldom deployed in unison. Compounding this is the fact that vendors typically fall into one camp or another, and few if any fully embrace both elements of e-mail content management.

In short e-mail is normally chaotic, mailboxes overflow and many serious system related and legal problems arise. The archiving of e-mails is now a priority issue in many organizations and typically we would advise any firm who currently has no system in place to implement some form of archiving without delay. But choosing the right vendor, and following best practices remains difficult, since there is so little agreement on norms, and the marketplace for the technology is confused and fragmented.

So, we are putting a stake in the ground and defining these two elements as simply and as clearly as we can for you. The definitions above are adapted from work that Sarah Kitmer did for Ovum in 2004 in a a groundbreaking paper called "E-mail management and archiving: you need both." Her analysis 4 years ago was spot on, but the e-mail situation had not become critical enough for people to act. In 2008 the situation is beyond critical for many enterprises, and if yours is one of them then we hope to guide you through this tricky area of content management as we move forward through the year.

    Now Get the Complete Real Story

    Vendor Evaluations

    Learn the real strengths and weaknesses of major vendors from around the world, in our research stream.