One vendor's view

As responses to our report are received, they are incorporated into this blog. This post is based on feedback received from Davin Cooke of GWAVA, who offered the following:



"I think you nailed the main reason to hold all email approach - Fancy algorithms and artificial intelligence exist but the criteria for retention is always a moving target, making management of the rules or maintaining a dictionary of terms by category difficult. By keeping all email, and ensuring that there is no rogue archiving on desktops or elsewhere, you can set a global policy and never be caught 3.5 years from now when you discover you should have kept something thanks to a misinterpretation of a message.


"Organizations reap tangible benefits by having retaining all email well beyond compliance. Three additional reasons are:


"1. Intellectual Property Reasons - For both Public and Private sectors, email forms a large percentage of the intellectual property, and its contents reflect the culture of their organizations and once indexed is an excellent resource for decisions. [It] is often paramount in settling internal HR and legal issues.


"2. Email Portability - As well keeping the email in a portable format outside of the messaging system will be very important should you decide to switch platforms or acquire newer technology to leverage its contents.


"3. Less Cost and Waste - Another valuable benefit is the ability to store email in cheaper storage and with less space. Systems like Exchange and GroupWise do not de duplicate as effectively as an archiving solution as messages are stored per PostOffice or MTA Message store. In a multi-post office environment you'd get substantial savings over just keeping it all in the email system."


Our thanks to Mr. Cooke for providing his review of our report.