The Portland Daily Business News reports that Osterman Research has published a new white paper entitled: “A Guide to Messaging Archiving.” According to the press release, Osterman Research “indicates that support for regulatory and legal compliance obligations and growing storage requirements are among the reasons for companies to deploy a messaging-archiving solution, and that any one of those rationale can often justify the entire cost of the archiving capability.” Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said that “having a messaging-archiving system in place is becoming increasingly critical in today’s business environment. We’re seeing an increasing number of examples of companies paying a massive price for a failure to produce electronic documents and e-mails.
The study includes the following factors as significant reasons to implement an email archiving solution:
Regulatory compliance. Industries that are heavily regulated, such as financial services or health care companies, must meet a variety of statutory requirements with regard to records retention.
Legal compliance. Dec 2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) require organizations to manage their data in such away that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary, such as during legal discovery proceedings.
Reducing the impact of storage. Roughly 60% of decision-makers cite growth in messaging storage as a serious or very serious problem. Messaging storage, driven by increasing use of e-mail, larger attachments and the like, is growing at an average of 35% annually. By migrating data from storage on messaging servers to archival storage, companies overall storage costs can be reduced, while improving their messaging server performance and expediting recovery from downtime incidents.
My thoughts: at this point there is certainly no shortage of reasons to archive email. This white paper only highlights the list of issues facing both enterprises and businesses in relation to integrating an email compliance solution. With HIPAA, SOX, GLB, NYSE, NASD, AND SEC laws firmly in place, the monitoring and enforcement of corporate email retention is a top priority for U.S. industry regulators. FRCP eDiscovery proceedings have only placed the necessity to archive email on a grander scale, as harsh sanctions and criminal prosecution are legitimate possibilities facing those companies who cannot produce email evidence in a timely fashion. Additionally, the strain placed on an in-house server to retain the thousands upon thousands of in-coming and out-going emails that are accumulated daily has also enhanced the attraction of outsourcing an email archiving service.
HOWEVER, is this really what will get the corporate world to archive their email? I think that Osterman Research has done a great job, but I think that the benefits to email archiving are out there and have been out there. With so many laws, requirements, and IT concerns already established will a new white paper citing what is already known really make a difference? For some it might, but for many it wont. In a recent series of posts about Email Insurance I said that cost, complexity, satisfaction with email backups, apprehension about an unfamiliar corporate practice, and professional disinterest were big reasons why email archiving has not risen to the top of the business agenda. What the U.S. business world needs is the following three factors to help push email archiving into the corporate spotlight: Education. Momentum. Trust. I want to elaborate much more on these three factors in subsequent blog entries but for now I am going to focus on education.
“A Guide to Messaging Archiving” sounds like a nice tool for a CEO or CIO willing to invest the time to learn about email archiving, but will they? Who reads white papers? White papers are academic endeavors designed to provide a degree of expertise in a given topic. Most business professionals are simply too busy to be bothered with reading a white paper no matter how beneficial it might be for their business operation. This seems a strange scenario. People are taking the time to draft comprehensive analyses of important topics and nobody is reading them? I wouldn’t say nobody here, but unless someone is seriously considering a purchase it is not a common phenomenon. How can education about corporate email archiving become more appealing? How do you make people WANT to get what they SHOULD get in the first place? I believe this is where attorneys come in. I believe this is where the news comes in. I believe this is where word of mouth comes in. Sometimes it depends on WHO is doing the educating. Might a white paper be more informative then listening to an attorney speak? Sure. Might it not? Sure. That is up to the individual person doing the listening. But what I do know is that hearing what you need to do from someone that you perceive to be in the right position to make a judgment call will win over reading a white paper almost every time. Our society is governed by law. People trust the law. U.S. Businesses trust the legal practitioners that represent the law. If email archiving is to be taken seriously it must come at least partially come from attorneys.
Is there something wrong with a new white paper on email archiving by Osterman Research? There is nothing WRONG in the traditional sense, but I feel that corporate America is just waiting a different form of education, one that they feel more comfortable with. When is this change coming? Is this change coming? I would like to do some more writing on these issues soon. Stay tuned.
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This is part 3 of a series on Email Insurance, focusing on why U.S. Businesses are not developing email retention policies. Part 1 can be found HERE and part 2 can be found HERE.
Apprehension about an unfamiliar corporate practice. “Email Archiving? Never heard of it before, I’m fine with paper copies.” Believe it or not, this is a common line from many business professionals that have not made the adjustment to an entirely new generation of email storage techniques and methods. The problem here is that with email becoming the official “voice” of the 21st century, paper copies are not as relevant or important as they once were. If Email archiving sounds like a foreign phrase to you, this following explanation should make it easier to understand. An email archiver captures and catalog’s your email when it enters and leaves your mailbox. It sorts all of your emails into a comprehensive index which you can use to search for specific key words. For instance, if you are looking for the word “email,” you use the advanced search functions to sort through all of your emails to find every mentioning of the phrase “email.” Why is this important? Well, there are several reasons, but one of the most critical is that during FRCP eDiscovery the opposing litigant in a federal law suit can ask you to present specific electronic evidence before the court. Email archiving allows you to find what you are looking for within minutes versus spending endless hours sifting through email backup tapes.
Professional disinterest. “When it happens to me, I’ll deal with it.” Famous last words, as some might say. There is nothing inherently wrong with this attitude, but those who have it are walking a fine line. All U.S. Companies and organizations run the risk of entering into litigation at some point in the course of their daily business operations. Email insurance is much the same as auto insurance, health insurance, and life insurance. It is making sure you are covered just in case something happens to go wrong. It might seem like an avoidable and escapable expense, but with email compliance regulations just in place for a few short years now, the tolerance had by courts will just continue to drop down to zero.
Why are U.S. Businesses not developing email retention policies? Well, as outlined above, the answer is spread out over a number of pertinent issues that many CEO’s and CIO’s have still not resolved. Cost, complexity, satisfaction with email backups, corporate apprehension, and professional disinterest are all playing a hand in explaining the results delivered by Osterman Research. Perhaps the real question boils down to the issue of: when? When will organizations treat HIPAA, SOX, NYSE, NASD, SEC, FINRA, GLB, and FRCP eDiscovery regulations as an item that remains at the top of the business agenda? Perhaps this would be a good topic for another blog entry. Stay tuned.
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