2008 IDC
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management solutions, ensuring both security of the maintained email as well as maintaining the
continuity of the archive may limit storage for data such as email.
Benefits of a Holistic Approach to Email Management
For customers in both the SMB and enterprise markets, cloud-based email management and
messaging solutions offer significant benefits over on-premises solutions.
Typically, software-as-a-service or SaaS-based solutions require low administrative overhead, and
can result in green benefits such as reduced power consumption, floor space, etc. With a SaaS-
based approach, there is also a reduced need for training internal IT staff, particularly in terms of 3S
skills. In addition, solutions available in a SaaS model are more rapidly deployed and often more
flexible than on-premises solutions.
SaaS services also focus on the business deliverables, abstracting from the organization the day-to-
day management of the underlying technology.
Most important, however, is the holistic approach that a cloud-based email management and
messaging solution addresses that typically includes the following components:
Storage: Archiving, off-site backup, and recovery
Information management: Consolidated storage and retrieval with centralized categorization for
unstructured data. This is important in legal use cases involving eDiscovery in which email is
used as evidence. In these situations, it is critical that the "chain of custody" of email messages
and related attachments can be verified in order to ensure the evidentiary quality of data. A more
commonplace situation where this feature is important is in the accurate quarantining of spam
from legitimate email messages, allowing end users to quickly locate relevant messages.
Continuity: Failover, continuity, and backup for in-house email in the event of a system failure or
disaster
Security: Message receipt/delivery, virus scanning, and content filtering
Policy: Enforcement of corporate policies such as attachment, disclaimer and acceptable use.
