AT&T latest entrant into managed archiving services

Last week, AT&T announced AT&T E-Mail Archiving, a managed service based on technology from archiving leader KVS and storage leader EMC.

AT&T’s is a fully managed service that extracts messaging system data from clients’ message stores, indexes the data and then stores it in one or more of AT&T’s 21 data centers located throughout the world. The company plans to have 25 data centers online by year-end.

AT&T is the newest among several providers of managed archiving services. Zantaz has been providing managed e-mail archiving services for several years; its services comply with financial services-related rules. A more recent entrant to the market, MessageRite, also offers managed e-mail archiving services, as well as spam and virus blocking and other services.

So why use a managed service when you can do it in-house? One of the most important advantages is the ability to build a fully compliant archive with little up-front cost, since the archiving infrastructure is managed by a third party. A managed service can also provide very good security and reliability because of the typically secure nature of data centers. Plus, a managed archiving service can be used to create or supplement disaster recovery capabilities.

So why is there resistance to a managed service model? Our research indicates that many, if not most, organizations are hesitant to use managed services because they are concerned about the security of sensitive data stored outside of the corporate firewall. Further, there is a perception that managed services are more expensive than in-house management – but quite often, they’re not.

A managed service model for e-mail archiving, spam/virus management and other services is certainly worth a look for any enterprise that would like to use IT staff members for more value-added functions.