ARCHIVING. What it is, what it isn t, and how it can improve your business operations

Transcription

1 ARCHIVING What it is, what it isn t, and how it can improve your business operations

2 OVERVIEW: Why businesses are turning to archiving As your business grows, communication between you and customers becomes increasingly critical to your success. For many companies is the most popular form of contacting those people you do business with. However, the sheer volume of these s can soon number in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Yes, you realize that you need to keep them for future reference. But this vast amount of messages can put a tremendous burden on your servers and network eventually slowing communications for everyone. With so many s it can also become increasingly difficult to find specific communications when the need arises. For these reasons many businesses are now turning to archiving. It s a way for businesses of all sizes to store and quickly retrieve s by off-loading them from your main servers. keeps your network flowing smoothly and allows you, your employees, and others with permission, to quickly pinpoint older s that are no longer in their inbox. This archiving helps you comply with regulatory requirements such as SOX, and to make informed decisions should a lawsuit, internal investigation or other issue surface. But more than simply protection, archiving also helps improve your business as you can find important information quickly (such as from years back with lost contact information, sales proposals or other business information). 2

3 With the rapid growth of cloud-based platforms, archiving is also a complementary and natural addition to this mix. Businesses are able to further leverage their new technologies to best create a central archive for and all critical information resources. In fact, the end results of archiving is more than security, as the technology works to improve IT operations, simplify application upgrades, improve mailbox management, With archiving, businesses are able to further leverage their new technologies to best create a central archive for and all critical information resources. and meet critical service level agreements. In this brief ebook we ll define archiving more specifically, explain the difference between archiving and backup, and discuss options you have for implementing a successful archiving solution. 3

4 vs. backup

5 Perhaps the most common misconception about archiving is that it is similar to backup. However, archiving and backup are two very different processes designed for two distinct purposes. Backup is designed for disaster recovery, such as when your servers fail from a mechanical or environmental problem. With backup you periodically take a point-in-time snapshot of all the information on your computer network. This can include not only your but software programs and other information as well. Usually, the information that you backup is easily accessible for only a certain amount of time until the next backup occurs. Then after 30 days or so, it is erased or stored in a manner that s not easy to find, access or retrieve. Another differentiator of backup, from an retention point of view, is that if an is erased by an employee before it gets backed-up, it will not be included on the next backup. Going back to try and find this specific is troublesome, if not impossible, as you would have to know the exact time-frame to look for. For example, if a business wanted to find an from two years ago they would have to know the exact date, find the backup tape, download the s and then search the s. This process often takes a full day or longer. Each is journaled to the archive, with one copy going to the recipient and one copy going to the archive., on the other hand, is an accumulated set of all incoming and outgoing s your company receives. You can decide how long to keep the , including saving all s for as long as you need. Each is journaled to the archive, with one copy going to the recipient and one copy going to the archive. This way, when an employee or customer deletes any specific , it still remains in the archive. With search capability built into archiving, it is also simple for you, your IT administrators, or even outside counsel to find specific s by searching for individual words, dates, senders or other criteria. If you manage your mail servers on-premise, another advantage of archiving is that you can off-load s to the archive so your servers will run faster. For example, you can allow your local server to store only s from the past one month. All older s are archived on separate servers where they can be accessed when needed. How ediscovery improves with archiving ediscovery is the process of finding important information you need for lawsuits, and it becomes critical if a lawsuit or other legal issue occurs. With all of your communications safely stored and easily retrieved, you or your legal counsel can quickly become educated 5

6 on the subject at hand. Searching by topic, word, word combinations, date, sender, recipient or other criteria, teams can get up-to-speed on matters and use the insights for informed decisions. Your individual employees can also easily and intuitively search for older s through their inbox. It is nothing less than the intelligence you need to help you efficiently retain, search and discover information. keeps all critical information safe Another advantage of archiving comes not for protection, but for situations where you need to retrieve business intelligence in older s. Perhaps someone on your sales team has left, but you need the contact information of a potential customer he or she ed. Or you may have submitted a sales quote to a customer last year, and now want to quickly recreate that quote for a similar customer. These are just a few of the ways retrieved information can help a business. Which archiving solution is right for you? If you realize that archiving can help improve your business, the next step is to find a solution best-suited for your unique needs. You will undoubtedly want a solution that s able to offset the burden of storage from your local servers. This will help ensure that you and your employees have fast access to older messages. You also want a solution that runs the gambit of archiving. It must be able to recover personal storage table (PST) files that users have saved online, making them quickly accessible for discovery requests. You ll also want archiving for your many laptop computers. If a laptop is lost, stolen or even damaged and the communications are not archived, the messages will be gone forever. If you are considering a cloud-based archiving solution, it makes sense to choose a vendor who offers unlimited storage and retention. As needs grow, so can the headaches of hitting unexpected storage ceilings. Optimized storing management making the right call The first decision you will have to make is whether to choose archiving on premise or in the cloud. Each solution has its own benefits. If you decide to keep all older s on your servers, on premise, you can work with your own IT 6

7 department as opposed to an outside vendor. Some companies want to house their own storage infrastructure. On the other hand, keeping older in the cloud can be less expensive as you don t have the cost of buying and maintaining the extra storage hardware. As previously mentioned, it also makes sense to ensure that your end users can easily access and search their archives directly from their inbox. This is much more efficient and effective than having employees constantly contacting IT for assistance in locating a lost or deleted message. For mobile employees, you should ensure that they can access their archive from a smart phone, tablet PC or via a Web browser (in the event that they do not have access to their ). Also keep in mind that if you have an continuity solution, it makes sense to have archiving that works in tandem with it. If disaster strikes, or your servers go down for maintenance, not only do you want employees to be able to send and receive you also want those s backed-up and older s accessible. Using archiving to spot trouble before it happens Another reason businesses are increasingly turning to archiving is that it can play an import role in preventative operations. For example, you can use the search functionality to occasionally search for words which may lead to problems. Examples could be words such as guarantee, words of a sexual nature or profanity. You can also set alerts for certain words or word combinations, which will automatically notify you when these words are used in your company s communications. Similarly, your legal counsel can also be alerted when s with problematic words are sent or received. For mobile employees, you should ensure that they can access their archive from a smart phone, tablet PC or via a Web browser (in the event that they do not have access to their ). How to best use archiving for a lawsuit or internal investigation. If and when problems arise in your company, using archiving to track the communications is a critical step in making informed decisions. Within minutes of an issue coming to the surface you can search for related , using criteria ranging from the sender and recipient to dates and of course key words. At the same time you can provide these s to your legal counsel, or give them permission to search your archives as well. As every second counts when you re trying to make smart decisions, archiving can save you valuable time and money. 7

8 Consider Symantec for your archiving If you consider the advantages of archiving to be a good choice for your business, take a look at the options available from Symantec. A leader in the world of online protection, Symantec is now helping more than 30,000 companies archive and retrieve their older s. Through the Symantec Enterprise Vault and Symantec Enterprise Vault.cloud products, today Symantec archives over 12 billion s and offers twenty four hours a day, seven days a week support to the many companies who rely on Symantec for protection and information retrieval. If you are using a Symantec cloud solution, your s will be archived to a secure Symantec data center. Learn more Want to know more? Contact us today for a comprehensive solution for your business: Select a solution at the Symantec Small Business Website, your online resource for recommendations, product details, and selection guides. For more information on archiving solutions for your business, please visit the Enterprise Vault.Cloud Web page. Request a call from a Symantec representative. Share this ebook! Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, the Checkmark Logo, and Backup Exec are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, Hyper-V, SharePoint, Exchange, and Active Directory are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. 8/