In the financial services industry, email has become the most effective and widely used method of business communication. With the retention, compliance, and legal discovery requirements governing email today - particularly in the financial industry - IT managers are realizing that successful email management is key for job security.

There are seven critical problems emerging with email management in 2007. This detailed report addresses these problems and introduces the "grand slam" of email issues: performance, disaster recovery, compliance, and e-discovery.

Why is there such an impending crisis in email management?

Email systems were not designed for long-term storage and as a result, performance is negatively impacted if email storage thresholds are not managed properly. Disaster recovery and business continuity are cited by 70% of senior executives as their primary reasons for email archiving.¹ When systems are down so is productivity, which negatively impacts bottom lines. Compliance requires that retention policies be put in place enabling corporations to meet new regulations and mandates. With CIOs and CEOs being held liable for compliance, jobs and corporate well-being are on the line. The requirement to immediately find past email records for legal discovery purposes, (or "e-discovery,") is the latest burden that CIOs are shouldering. Through 2010, companies that have not adopted formal e-discovery processes will spend nearly twice as much on gathering and producing documents as they will on legal services.²

The email management crisis is comprised of these email facts:

• Email is the most commonly used and most critical business tool.
• Email is now discoverable and must be readily accessible.
• Email must be saved and easily retrievable to comply with legal and regulatory mandates.
• Email needs to be continually accessible so that business is not interrupted.
• The increased use of email has resulted in more documents that need to be archived.
• The increased use of email has created a greater need for data stores leading to a management nightmare that is growing out of control.

A solution must be found that makes it possible for IT to store all essential documents, produce documents on demand, reduce storage costs and is as automated and end user accessible as possible to minimize the demands on IT.

¹ James Sherwood. "Disaster Recovery Cited as Strongest Driver for Archiving", CRN, October 12, 2006
² John Bace & Debra Logan, "The Costs and Risks of E-discovery in Litigation", Gartner, December 1, 2005

Paul D'Arcy is Vice President, Marketing at MessageOne, 512-652-4500; email: darcy_paul@messageone.com; web: www.messageone.com. To read the entire study, download a free copy of the white paper, The Email Management Crisis: New Research on Seven Critical Email Management Problems at www.messageone.com/7Problems.