There are several things you should consider before you choose an email archiving solution. While a basic, built-in solution may work well for some companies, a more comprehensive solution may be in order for others. Answering the following questions is a good place to start.

• Are you, have you been or are you likely to be involved in a lawsuit of any kind? If so, you need an email archiving solution with comprehensive e-discovery features.

• Is your company heavily regulated (i.e., do you have to adhere to specific regulations, such as FINRA, SEC, SOX, GLBA, HIPAA, etc.)? Keep in mind, any company that has a chance of being involved in litigation within the U.S. Federal Court System must comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).

• Do you want to equip your end users with access to their own personal archives? This valuable tool significantly reduces the burden on your IT resources and allows your staff to be more productive overall.

• Are you concerned about email storage quotas (even after moving to a hosted email provider)? According to a recent Radicati Group, Inc. study, the number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In addition, while worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day by 2013. It is imperative to keep this unprecedented growth in mind as you determine what archiving solution best meets your specific needs.

In many cases, you may need a more robust email archiving solution than the one being offered by your cloud email provider. However, only a select few third-party email archiving solutions will seamlessly integrate with your chosen cloud-based email solution so choose carefully. You want to make sure your solution meets key business requirements.

• Compliance – meet the strictest regulatory requirements.

• Continuity – keep your business running in the event of a disaster or unplanned downtime.

• Flexibility – easily move to another email service provider in the future.

If you’re not sure which type of email archiving solution is best for your company, consider the scenarios in this chart.

Third-Party Email Archiving is Best for:	Built-In Archiving Ideal with:
Large Exchange databases	Small Exchange databses
Unpredictable, rapid growth	Limited database growth
Archives of "dormant" users	Limited "dormant" users
Unsure about email client upgrade	Planning to upgrade email client
Limited storage on-hand	Excess storage capacity
Limited backup capacity	Excess backup capacity
Limited IT resources	IT resources have time to manage solution
SEC/FINRA-regulated companies	No SEC/FINRA regulations
E-Discovery concerns	Limited e-discovery issues
Thinking about cloud email	No plan for cloud email

Summary of Cloud Archiving Providers

The following table provides a review of the pure cloud-based archiving solutions that can integrate with various cloud email solutions. As noted, only some pure cloud-based archiving solutions integrate with all of the cloud email platforms, while on-premise, appliance and hybrid archiving solutions cannot simply plug into the cloud. They are challenged on a number of fronts:

1. They rely on MAPI (which cannot be supported by multi-tenant email providers)
2. They use log shipping or event syncing technologies (for copying data to the archive) which cannot be supported by cloud email providers
3. They cannot install on-premise software or appliances within the data centers of the cloud-based email providers

Provider	Market Share	Notes	Pricing Model	Mailbox Mgmt	E-Discovery	Compliance	Continuity
Global Relay	13%	Global Relay sells primarily through partners; mostly financial services	Per user, per month (additional storage fees if allotted limits are exceeded)	Limited (requires direct access via a web browser and separate credentials)	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Supported	Limited (not integrated into Outlook)
Google	14%	Google includes its email archiving solution as part of Google Apps Premier Edition	Per user, per year (additional fees apply based on length of retention); requires subscription to email security service)	Limited (requires direct access via a web browser and separate credentials)	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Not supported	Not supported
LiveOffice	36%	Largest cloud-based provider	Per user, per month (unlimited storage and retention)	Supported (complete Outlook, OWA and Lotus Notes integration)	Supported (advanced e-discovery workflow, case management and legal holds)	Supported	Supported
Microsoft	5%	Need to purchase through an authorized partner	Per user, per month (additional storage fees if allotted limits are exceeded); requires subscription to email	Limited(requires direct access via a web browser and separate credentials)	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Supported	Supported
Smarsh	17%	Historically, Smarsh's focus has been financial services	Per user, per month (unlimited storage)	Limited (requires direct access via a web browser and separate credentials)	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Supported	Not supported
Sonian	n/a	Sonian has partnered with a few Hosted Exchange providers	Per user, per month (unlimited storage)	Limited (requires direct access via a web browser and seperate credentials)	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Not supported	Not supported
USA.NET	n/a	Archiving is not a strategic focus for USA.NET	Per user, per month (unlimited storage)	Not supported	Limited (limited e-discovery workflow, no case management, no legal holds)	Supported	Limited

Archiving Options by Cloud Email Provider

We think it’s also helpful to review which hosted email providers offer which types of archiving solutions. In many cases, once you have chosen your cloud-based email provider, you have just limited your archiving options depending on their platform, the relationships they have established with third-party archiving vendors, and how open their email solutions are to integration with third-party archiving solutions.

	Developed Own Archiving Solution?	Can you take Built-In Archive Solution with you?	Compatible with Third-Party Solution?
Microsoft BPOS	Yes	No	LiveOffice, Global Relay
Intermedia	No	Yes	LiveOffice
Apptix	No	Yes	LiveOffice, Global Relay
AppRiver	No	Yes	LiveOffice, Global Relay
Rackspace	No	Yes	Sonian
USA.NET	No	Yes	LiveOffice
Google Apps Premier	Yes	No	LiveOffice
LotusLive Notes	No	No	LiveOffice
Yahoo! Zimbra	No	No	LiveOffice

All feedback is welcome, please send us an email with any comments or suggestions.