Email communication is critical to every business. According to Osterman research, 75% of email content is necessary for successful company operations. This only shows organizations need to have some kind of email archiving facility to retain valuable content.
Businesses can avail two options in email archiving- they can store all email records on their in-house mail server or they can use cloud-based email archiving services. The latter option is preferred by most businesses and here are the reasons why cloud-based email archiving is more beneficial.
- Lower and More Predictable Costs
It is no exaggeration to say that email archiving can be expensive considering different factors associated with it. If you are planning to develop an on-site email archiving solution, you need to get new servers and compatible storage hardware to store the increasing volume of messages.
When you employ cloud-based email archiving solution, you are not required to worry about the infrastructure needed. The vendor takes care of all requirements that include satisfying hardware and software requirements and setting things for you.
Since the cloud-based solution is based at the data center run by the vendor, you don’t have to worry about the maintenance fees and hiring the staff to manage the email archiving solution for you.
- Flexible Storage Management
Managing email archiving in-house could be intimidating and difficult task for any business. According to an industry survey conducted by Mimecast, 49% of companies had to upgrade their storage infrastructure to cope up with growing email demands.
On the other hand, cloud-based solutions offer scalable storage space and organizations have the freedom to flex up or down to meet the storage requirements. The charges are levied as per mailbox without considering the need for hardware and software upgrades required to keep up with internal changes.
- Faster Recovery and Stronger Data Backup
If you have email archiving solution on site, it might happen that any employee having access to archives may delete important mail intentionally or unintentionally. If you ask IT, people, restoring deleted mail can be a tough task and it may take a few hours to a few weeks.
With cloud-based solutions, there is a remote possibility of loss of important data in the mail as it is difficult to tamper or delete mail in the cloud. Email archived in the cloud is generally stored in encrypted form and it is a common practice followed by cloud solutions vendors to store every email in its original format mirrored to multiple locations. Hence, the recovery of deleted mail from the backup is also faster in comparison to the onsite solution.
- Better Regulatory Compliance
There is no evidence why the cloud-based solution is less secure for email archiving than on-premise infrastructure. On the contrary, the email archiving vendors have the skills and experience need to ensure the “common problems” do not persist.
With cloud-based email archiving, organizations can store sensitive data away from prying eyes. Also, the SLA of the email archiving vendors guarantees the customer’s data will only be stored in appropriate jurisdictions to ensure compliance with the regulations set for specific sectors.
- Enhanced Productivity
With email archiving moved to the cloud, IT staff will be free to focus on core tasks. The email archiving solution in the cloud is automated requiring less or no human intervention. Cloud providers employ scalable storage techniques which mean your IT department don’t have to manage storage.
Though the email archiving is done in the cloud, your organization still holds granular control over the emails and the content. The cloud service providers present your IT managers with dashboards that give them more control and visibility into the systems from any locations.
Though the email archives are stored in data center managed by your vendor, important aspects such as policy-based deletion and records management are completely under your organization’s control. The cloud-based email archiving can be integrated with popular email clients like Outlook and users can find and restore messages from archives intuitively just like drag and drop commands.
The benefits of cloud-based email archiving are crystal clear. Having a centralized and fully managed email archiving is not the only ticket to cost control and efficiency; it is a passport to corporate confidence and lawful compliance.
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