As I’m sure that everyone knows by now, your organization needs to be archiving its electronic communication. This includes email, social media, and mobile communication data. If you aren’t archiving, you need to start. But why? Why should I archive? What are the reasons that your organization should be archiving?
Why should I archive?
Here are some of the reasons why you should be archiving, as stated by Osterman Research in the white paper “Next-Generation Archiving: Extracting Intelligence From Your Electronic Archives”:
- Litigation support
- Regulatory compliance
- End-user self service
- Storage management
- Retention of corporate history
These reasons for archiving are important and I am sure that most companies that archive are doing so because of the above. However, the importance of each one of these reasons has been changing over time, as shown in this image.
As you can see, regulatory compliance and litigation support are growing in importance as reasons to archive. Even though the reasons for archiving may be shifting, the need for archiving continues to grow.
What should I be archiving?
There is a great blog post that I wrote a few years ago about what your company should be archiving. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you take a look. “What Does My Company Need to Archive”. This post goes into detail about what you need to archive and why. It explains some of the regulations that mandate that you archive. With that information as a baseline, let’s take a look at what most organizations are archiving.
This chart shows that most organizations are archiving corporate email and many are archiving files. However, what is really missing is social media, instant messaging, and mobile content. Imagine the amount of information that is contained in those types of communications. The answer to what you should be archiving is simple -business communication! Think about it. What does your company use to communicate? Email? Then you should archive email. Social media? Then you need to archive social media? BlackBerry? Archive BlackBerry communication data. Android … OK, you get the picture.
What should I do?
At the very least, you need to be archiving corporate email. This is so important. I cannot stress it enough. Say it with me, “I need to archive my company email!” All companies – large or small – need to archive email. There are so many reasons to do so, including, as this post has stated, litigation support, regulatory compliance, storage management, and many others. If you are not archiving email right now, you need to start!
With that being said, you need to archive more than just email. It is important to also archive corporate social media and mobile communication data. You need oversight on those types of communications, and not doing so can leave you vulnerable to lawsuits, fines or sanctions.
Archiving is more than just being ready in case something bad happens. Without a central archive of electronic communication data, you are missing out on a wealth of information about what your employees are communicating. This valuable source of data will help you make better business decisions. So, let’s say it together “I need to archive email, social media, and mobile”!
What are my next steps?
Not to beat a dead horse, but if you are not archiving right now, you need to start. So, your next step is to get an archiving solution.
Micro Focus offers a complete messaging solution, Enterprise Messaging, that includes email, scheduling, instant messaging, chat-based teamwork, security, archiving, backup, and disaster recovery. This solution includes complete and compliant archiving for your messaging system. Enterprise Messaging enables you to have oversight and visibility of your messaging system by archiving all messaging data into a single, unified archive. This includes emails, appointments, files, and attachments. With built-in eDiscovery tools, you can access, search, place litigation holds, tag, print, forward, save, redact, and export archived data.
To learn more about archiving with Enterprise Messaging, visit HERE
To get a quote on Enterprise Messaging, visit HERE
And be sure to check out this great blog post about Enterprise Messaging.
