Archiving the messaging system - Part 1 of 2

By Michael Osterman
Network World Groupware Newsletter, 01/31/00

It's no longer arguable that messaging is a critical application for the vast majority of organizations. E-mail has become the lifeblood of most organizations and is the application that most users would give up last. But what happens to all of the information in the message store, and how accessible is older information?

Creative Networks, Inc. has conducted research on back-up and archiving technologies and practices, and we've found some interesting things:

For the typical e-mail user, one-third of their critical business information is kept in the message store.

Thirty-five percent of e-mail users store more than one-half of their critical business information in the message store.

Two out of five organizations do not have an e-mail or document retention policy.

One out of every six organizations has not implemented any policies related specifically to archiving or backing up the messaging system.

The median message store space allotted to each user is 45 megabits. Based on the number of e-mail messages sent and received by the typical user in our research, and based on our assumptions about how this e-mail is handled, we found that the message store for the typical user will fill up in less than two weeks.

In our research, and this is a key point, we found that one-quarter of e-mail users are not able to retrieve information from the backed up or archived message store. That means that for a large percentage of users, old information in the message store is not accessible once it becomes more than a few weeks old.

In the next newsletter, we'll discuss the implications of not being able to access this information.

RELATED LINKS

Michael D. Osterman is the principal of Osterman Research, a market research firm that helps organizations understand the markets for messaging, directory and related products and services. He can be reached by clicking here.

Messaging archive
Past newsletters.
Message system migration planning
01/24/00.

Firms are consolidating their messaging systems
01/12/00.

Self-destructing e-mail: pragmatic or paranoid?
Network World, 11/29/99.

Archive of Network World on Groupware and Messaging newsletters