It's amazing how a technology can start out as a point solution but as market demands and conditions evolve, its role changes.

Email archiving originally took off as a "must have" for organizations concerned with email storage challenges. Email servers were full of old and stale email. IT was burdened with the troublesome task of enforcing mailbox size limits. Users were storing email on PSTs without any controls.



Then along came the development of new email archiving software that solved these problems. These solutions allowed users to easily access archived mail. Storage issues were alleviated. IT overhead tasks were reduced. Everyone is happy, right?

Maybe at first, but eventually other risks started to surface for companies when it came to email archiving "litigation readiness for one. Saved email represents significant risk if there is ever a discovery order, because you're required by law to be able to find content in a timely fashion or you risk fines, the loss of the lawsuit, or an expensive settlement. The same goes for regulatory compliance. You have to know what data you have and be able to prove compliance or again, you risk significant fines. As a result, companies, including CA, began enhancing and upgrading their email archiving tools to solve these new, more sophisticated challenges.

So the market has changed. The stakes have gone from solving storage issues, primarily an IT concern, to reducing risks associated with Litigation and Compliance. Essentially what was once a storage challenge is now an Information Governance challenge. The benefits of addressing this new challenge are that organizations can proactively reduce risk, ensure budgets are wisely allocated, and can give their business the agility required to compete "all of which are especially important under current market conditions.

The need for email archiving is still there, but the game has changed. I see the market continuing to evolve as Information Governance becomes pervasive in effective and well run organizations.