Does Your Company Have an E-mail Archiving and Management Problem?

By Alan Pelz-Sharpe at 2008-06-09 07:24:00 |

You may sense that your firm has an E-mail Archiving or Management problem, but how can you be sure? Using the checklist below, click each box that represents a symptom your enterprise presently experiences. We'll total up your score at the end and offer some feedback. Please note that this quiz is not in any way scientific - it's just indicative and fun advice!

(Privacy note: this is an anonymous quiz, and none of your answers are submitted to our server.)

14 Symptoms of an E-mail Archiving and Management problem

Your Exchange/Notes system is bloated with "legacy" mail

Retrieving and finding old mail is a slow and painful process

The cost of backing up your mail system is prohibitive

HR and Legal are becoming increasingly vigilant about derogatory or offensive comments content in mail

HR and Legal are concerned about increased regulations focused on e-mail

You worry about the cost of an e-discovery request

End users frequently create PST/NST archive files

You have a policy of simply deleting all mail older than (for example) 90 days

Linking mail and mail content to specific business transactions and processes is difficult to do

You want to apply granular records management to your e-mail

You want to reduce your storage requirements for mail

You need to search across multiple e-mail mailboxes/users/servers

You have little or no disaster recovery provisioning for your mail

You want to build a corporate archive and e-mail is part of that initiative

This wont hurt a bit...

This might sting a little...

I'm going to put you in touch with a specialist...

It's worse than I thought...

Congratulations!
Your e-mail problems are less worrisome than most - you are clearly making some effort to apply some policy management and possibly archiving methods to your mail. In any case, you may well benefit from new and easier to use technologies that arriving on the market. Or potentially in some niche technologies to build on the work you have already done.

Be careful!
Your e-mail could become a major problem for you soon - you should look now at applying better policies to your mail, and improving the current archive and back up situation before it's too late.

Ouch!
Frankly you're in a bit of a mess - you need to immediately put some procedures and technology in place to first reduce the e-mail mountain, and bring it to a size that you can control it. Fingers crossed an auditor doesn't turn up on your doorstep - or heaven forbid you are hit be a disaster and lose your mail.

Browse this site, investigate the E-mail Archiving & Management Report, and start creating a business case for rebuilding your e-mail archiving and management system.

 

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