Originating Author: Dave Vellante
The center of gravity for email archiving is shifting from the IT server room to the board room, via the court room. This means that the economics of email archiving is shifting as well, from an emphasis on keeping the cost of storing historic emails low (i.e. a focus on TCO) to one of compliance, reducing corporate risk exposure and proactively ensuring that corporate and employee behavior is consistent with the culture and objectives of the organization as a whole.
Moreover, in addition to legal discovery activities, organizations will increasingly integrate email archiving and messaging technologies with other strategic initiatives including document management, information lifecycle management and rapid user access to unstructured data. Efficient infrastructure is essential but insufficient as the real value proposition is shifting to reducing corporate exposure and increasing end user productivity.
Action Item: IT organizations must recognize that as the economics and value proposition of email archiving and other messaging technologies shift, their centers of expertise will also shift to initially serve corporate counsel to support electronic discovery activities and over time to radically re-architect the unstructured information infrastructure of the organization.
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