Expenses involved in Email Archiving

Most organizations are well aware that using a Exchange server is not enough to meet email archiving needs.  There are many third party suppliers currently in the marketplace who sell software solutions specifically designed to ease this burden.

Most vendors offer good solution options, but it remains an expensive exercise to acquire the necessary software and hardware, licensing and support of whichever system is chosen.  If a complete system is acquired it will need a support infrastructure, building or rackspace and incur ongoing costs like leases, rent and power.

One of the most oft overlooked issues when dealing with archiving and archive compliance is the issue of retention rules.  If setting up a new solution the retention rules take an inordinate amount of planning and execution.  It is widely accepted that they should use your businesses existing policies and adapt them to the new archiving system, but it is still very time consuming to put into place.

Buyers also need to consider compatibility with existing infrastructure.  It is essential that the solution interfaces with the mail system, otherwise there are going to be problems.  There are many more systems out there than just Exchange and whatever tools are used to store mails has to be compatible with the existing solution.

Buying an archiving solution also brings scalability into the equation.  If a business grows, will the systems be able to expand with them?  Will the archive still be fast enough when it is near capacity, and how easily can more capacity be added?

Most 'onsite' archiving solutions involve licensing of some kind.  This will be a rolling expense, most likely on a yearly basis, in most cases  the figure is something like 20% of the purchase price per year.  This is a significant expenditure that needs to be factored in to any cost estimates.

Many vendors will take care of the hardware as well as the software in a maintenance contract.  This can be useful if a business is fluid and likely to expand.  Adding scalability to your systems can be expensive and time consuming so it is often easier to let the vendor take care of it.  Although this option is the easiest to manage it is also the most expensive one.  The buyer will end up paying a premium for this kind of service, but it does offer more peace of mind.

This kind of email archiving solution is a viable and useful one for companies that want to keep things on site and relatively under their control.  It does have its downsides that need to be considered before going with this type of setup.