Email dominates business communications today, and government and regulatory agencies have been quick to recognize its importance as a category of business records and take steps to safeguard its content and regulate its use.

As email has grown into the preferred method of business communications, email servers and inboxes have become the de-facto means of information storage within organizations. However, unlike database systems, email systems do not have sophisticated capabilities for long-term storage or rapid retrieval.

In most organizations, email “storage management” doesn’t extend much beyond basic server tape backup and restore for limited time periods. When old files must be found, retrieving the data consists of time-consuming, offline hunt-and-peck searches through multiple backup tapes. With long-term email retrieval so painful, it’s no wonder employees keep months or even years worth of important emails on their PC hard drives or in their server inboxes until hounded to clean out their allotted storage space. The result is terabytes of duplicate, scattered, isolated or virtually irretrievable but valuable company information.