Could Your Systems be Hindering Your Most Productive Employees?

Transcription

1 MAIMIZING BUSINESS VALUE WITH OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING Could Your Systems be Hindering Your Most Productive Employees? An Executive Guide to Maximizing Business Value with Operational Archiving EECUTIVE SUMMARY As and instant messaging (IM) have grown in usage as critical business communications, government and regulatory agencies have taken steps to safeguard its content and regulate its use and retention as a record of doing business. While businesses such as yours may recognize the necessity to archive your and IM communications from a corporate governance and regulatory perspective, it is equally important to recognize the value of archiving from an IT operational standpoint. Operational archiving allows individual users to have long-term access to messages in their in-box, while at the same time reduces the storage burden on overloaded servers. This paper explains the importance of operational archiving of your and IM communications and describes how you can ensure that your organization s Information Technology (IT) department facilitates rather than hinders the productivity of your employees through the proper implementation of operational archiving. It concludes by explaining how Postini Integrated Message Management services deliver the key benefits of operational archiving as part of its many managed service advantages. WHY YOU NEED OPERATIONAL AS WELL AS COMPLIANCE ARCHIVING FOR AND IM A common response to improving corporate governance and meeting regulatory requirements for archiving electronic communications such as and IM is to purchase an archive solution as quickly as possible. In evaluating archive solutions, however, it is essential that executive management understand the differences between policy and regulatory compliance archiving, operational archiving, and simple back up procedures. While related, each of these drivers for an archiving solutions has its own set of unique requirements and benefits. Electronic message back up procedures are designed simply to offload data so that it can be restored in the event that servers go down for any reason. Policy and regulatory compliance archiving encompasses three major areas of electronic communication: Retention to satisfy compliance with specific regulations Legal readiness for e-discovery of archived communications Records retention for business continuity to supplement back up Operational archiving, on the other hand, is designed to enhance employee productivity and IT efficiency by offloading message storage and load from mission-critical servers and archiving messages separately from these servers, yet still 1

2 MAIMIZING BUSINESS VALUE WITH OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING Business Value/Drivers Operational Archive Compliance Archive Typical Backup Minimize Storage Costs Optimize System Performance Improve Employee Productivity Protect Data and Privacy Respond Quickly to Discovery Demands Establish Audit Trail and Chain of Custody Manage Retention Periods Minimize Legal Risk Restore Data After Server Crash Figure 1: A comprehensive message archiving strategy provides business value through both operational and compliance archiving. making these messages accessible to users. See Figure 1 for an overview of the benefits of each irretrievable, but valuable company information. INBO HAS BECOME DE FACTO MESSAGE STORAGE Operational archiving has become especially important because servers and inboxes, for example, have become the de-facto means of information storage within organizations. But, unlike database systems, systems do not have sophisticated capabilities for long-term storage or rapid retrieval. Analysts Michael Osterman (2006) and Sara Radicati (2006) agree that the problem will only get worse in the coming years as the number of messages that workers send and receive continues to increase while at the same time the average message size continues to grow. In most organizations, storage management doesn t extend much beyond basic server tape backup and restore for limited time periods. When old messages must be found, retrieving the data consists of timeconsuming, offline hunt-and-peck searches through multiple backup tapes. With long-term retrieval so painful, it s no wonder employees keep months or even years-worth of important s on their PC hard drives or in their server inboxes until hounded to clean out their allotted storage space. The result is terabytes of duplicate, scattered, isolated or virtually irretrievable but valuable company information. THE ESCALATING MESSAGE SERVER STORAGE CHALLENGE As the volume of stored messages increases, IT organizations often struggle with spiraling data storage costs, server performance degradation and reduced staff efficiency. But the most serious problem stems from the inherent unmanageability of message servers. Internal message storage systems do not have effective or efficient backup and restore mechanisms and as a result are very costly and difficult to maintain as archival systems. When problems arise that require a system restore, the message servers must be brought down, and users key link to external and internal communications is unavailable. 2

3 MAIMIZING BUSINESS VALUE WITH OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING Many IT departments respond to the problem of burgeoning message storage by attempting to limit the size of users inboxes. However, these attempts create a whole new set of issues: Users resort to saving messages on their desktop computers, making backups less reliable and search and retrieval more complex. The inconvenience annoys users and reduces their efficiency and productivity. Storage transfer masks the true scale of the problem. To comply with message search and retrieval court directives for compliance or legal discovery, administrators are forced to undertake the difficult task of searching through computer hard disks and backup tapes. BEST PRACTICES FOR AN OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING SOLUTION Developing an effective and efficient electronic communication operational archive can be a challenge. Many vendors offering archive products do not necessarily provide a comprehensive operational archiving solution. Here is what your organization should expect from an operational archive perspective: Automatic - Policy compliance should not be left to individual discretion, so the archival system must be run automatically and be enforced at the organizational level. The user should not have to take any action to initiate operational archiving. Self-Serve - Users should have self-service access to their individual message archive to eliminate any administrative burden on your IT staff. The archival system should be able to offload inactive messages onto a completely separate offline, centralized storage platform that allows individual users to access and retrieve archived messages as needed. Selective - Archiving should occur according to corporate governance and/or regulatory policies, and only required messages should be archived. Incoming, outgoing and internal and IM messages plus indexes and attachments all must be captured and stored. Since spam now comprises up to 80 percent or more of messages, the system must be able to quickly and accurately filter out junk mail before the data is archived to limit the storage costs. Secure and Tamper Proof - Stored messages should be secure from unauthorized access, and protected from alteration or tampering. To meet strict legal evidence handling and industry regulations, an archival system must build in reliable defenses against tampering or access by unauthorized users. Audit and surveillance mechanisms that document access request and retrieval activity must also be in place to safeguard or authenticate the integrity of the entire system. Easily Searchable - The key capability of an archival system is its ability to retrieve specific threads of information rapidly and accurately. messages must be thoroughly indexed by date, recipient, sender, subject line, and content so users can quickly and efficiently search for the information they need. Always Available - Given the business-critical nature of electronic communications, the archival system must be able to continue to operate uninterrupted during an system failure. This capability requires a highly redundant, distributed infrastructure that is far too costly for many organizations to create and maintain. Affordable - To implement an archival system, companies must consider the total cost of ownership upfront implementation costs as well as ongoing support and maintenance costs. An average archive system project can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the organization and robustness of the archival system. This cost does not include professional services or administration and maintenance costs, all of which can drastically increase the total cost of ownership. 3

4 MAIMIZING BUSINESS VALUE WITH OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING POSTINI S MANAGED SERVICE ASSURES COMPLIANCE AND OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING As the recognized global leader in Integrated Message Management, Postini understands the growing regulatory compliance, e-discovery and business continuity and efficiency challenges organizations face. Founded in 1999, Postini protects and manages electronic communications for more than 35,000 businesses worldwide. To meet the needs of its customers, Postini offers a powerful yet cost-effective managed service for archiving electronic communications. Introduced in 2005, Postini Archive Manager is the latest component of Postini s Integrated Message Management Service Architecture. With this new archive service, Postini delivers a complete archiving solution that encompasses both compliance and operational archiving capabilities within its Integrated Message Management system. Having already demonstrated proven performance in spam and virus blocking and system continuity support during disasters or outages, Postini has now extended its infrastructure, and expertise to support the complete scope of electronic message archiving. For compliance and operational archiving, Postini Archive Manager eliminates the management burden of disparate message storage systems by offering an independent, secure, offsite, accessible, message archive service. Because Postini Archive Manager centralizes message storage, administrators can implement policies that limit the volume of stored message on their internal production servers. Flexible archiving options allow IT staff to capture and IM from selected organizations or individuals. As a result, server backup and restore tasks take significantly less time, eliminating time-consuming searches through hard disk and backup tapes. OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING WITH PERSONAL ARCHIVE One of the key advantages of Postini s operational archiving solution, called Postini Personal Archive, stems from its powerful, convenient user access and message restore capabilities. Users can easily hunt for any sent or delivered message from thousands of stored messages using Postini s familiar Message Center user interface. Users can streamline their search efforts with key phrases, date, subject Features Benefits Automatic archiving Removes the management overhead and risks of manual in house efforts Safe offsite storage with redundant data centers Ensures the integrity and security of archived records and access to archived information by authorized personnel Powerful built-in search tools Enable end users to search through archived records rapidly and efficiently Familiar Message Center User Interface Lets end users conveniently access their personal archives with an easy-to-use, Web-based interface Integrated with Postini Enterprise Manager Simplifies the administration of environment by integrating archive and message security Integrated with Postini Archive Manager Allows end users to search, retrieve, view and restore any message managed by Postini Personal Archive Figure 2: Key Advantages of Postini Personal Archive 4

5 MAIMIZING BUSINESS VALUE WITH OPERATIONAL ARCHIVING line, or recipient. Once the correct messages are identified, retrieval is practically instantaneous. And since Postini removes all unwanted junk before archiving, no user has to waste time and money sorting through worthless records. The entire process takes minutes instead of hours or days. Postini Personal Archive allows mail administrators to offload active message data from message servers, significantly reducing operational costs and eliminating time-consuming searches through hard disk and backup tapes. It lets end users quickly search their personal message store and download archived messages without administrator involvement. Thus, Postini Archive Manager delivers comprehensive benefits that enable businesses to streamline the retention and access of both and IM communications. AN EFFECTIVE, AFFORDABLE MESSAGE ARCHIVE SOLUTION Increasing regulatory compliance, e- discovery legal readiness, business continuance, and efficiency concerns are forcing organizations to seriously evaluate their outdated records retention storage processes. In the process, organizations are faced with selecting a better message archive solution among many in-house and outsourced options available. As one of the most respected names in the message management arena, Postini brings considerable knowledge and expertise to creating an efficient, cost-effective message archive and retrieval solution. Postini Archive Manager helps companies offload the significant burdens associated with creating, maintaining, and managing an in-house message archive system. Postini Archive Manager works with all existing message and storage systems, so no additional resources are required to devote time and effort integrating yet another system. Postini s managed service approach avoids staffing and training increases by providing experienced, highly focused message experts. It substitutes escalating capital and capacity planning costs with a predictable monthly operation expense. And finally, it allows your IT department to concentrate on projects that build business value while offloading the burden of message security and management to outside specialists. HOW TO LEARN MORE To find out how you can take advantage of new Postini Archive Manager and Postini s full suite of Integrated Message Management services, visit our website at call toll-free , or sales@postini.com. ABOUT POSTINI As the leader in Integrated Message Management, Postini managed services protect businesses from a wide range of IM and threats, provide message archiving and encryption, and enable the management and enforcement of enterprise policies to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Corporate Headquarters San Carlos, CA USA Toll-free: info@postini.com EMEA Headquarters London, UK Tel: +44 (0) info_emea@postini.com Asia Pacific Headquarters Tokyo, Japan Tel: info_apac@postini.com Copyright 2006 Postini, Inc. All rights reserved. WP Postini, the Postini logo and Postini Perimeter Manager are registered trademarks or service marks of Postini, Inc. PREEMPT is a trademark of Postini, Inc. All other trademarks listed in this document are the property of their respective owners. 5