WHITEPAPER

The Interactive ArchiveMaking your email archive work harder for business advantage

About MimecastMimecast (www.mimecast.com) delivers cloud-based email management for Microsoft Exchange, including archiving, continuity and security. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves over 6,000 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa and the Channel Islands.

For more information, please visit www.mimecast.com or email info@mimecast.com.

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Contents03 Introduction03 The Old Email Archive05 The New Interactive Archive05 Email Management in the Cloud06 Introducing the Interactive Archive07 The essential components of the Interactive Archive

07 For End users 07 For Administrators

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Introduction

Email is still the dominant form of communication in businesses today. It pervades almost every system and transaction and still remains a quick, casual form of communication. Email has become a mission critical application within businesses because of the importance of the data transacted through, and stored in, email environments. A decade or so ago, as IT departments began to recognize the growing importance of the corporate email environment, they started to add supporting services and platforms around the core server environment, which is predominantly Microsoft Exchange. Appliances, applications and services to protect and store email were added, usually driven by business problems as well as changing corporate governance requirements.

Email archiving was one such platform, and remains of critical importance today. Email archiving systems were first added to our networks in the mid to late 1990s, initially designed to solve storage management problems, but more recently utilized to enable businesses to retain a complete record of their corporate knowledge and intellectual property. Long term retention of email nowadays is invariably driven by a need to respond to legal obligations under subpoena or eDiscovery request, or mitigate against the threat of data loss due to disaster or accident.

The advent of Cloud Computing in the same timeframe has disrupted these traditional on-premise email archiving markets. Cloud Computing has permeated almost every industry in ways even the most forward thinking IT departments could never have imagined. The result is a paradigm shift in modern computing. The rise of the Cloud could even be described as the dawn of a new computing age. This Whitepaper puts forth the premise that the old on-premise archives are being eclipsed by the capabilities of a new type of Cloud-based email archive, an Interactive Archive. Cloud archiving platforms are not new, and simply moving email data to the Cloud does not solve the problems associated with making all that data useful.

The Interactive Archive, driven by the Cloud, on the other hand, is a more useful, valuable and interactive archiving platform for business users. The Interactive Archive allows users to leverage the archive and data therein for business intelligence, as well as end user productivity, ubiquitous access, and the corporate governance and compliance requirements that underpin the archive itself.

The Old Email Archive

Old style email archives that store data in an appliance or software solution were designed to solve a storage management problem associated with earlier versions of Microsoft Exchange. Most leveraged a now near-defunct feature of Microsoft Exchange called Message Stubbing. A feature designed to keep users working in their inbox, but offload the bulk of the message size to a third party archive, stubbing is cumbersome and Microsoft has discouraged its use.

Mailbox management was only one driver for deploying an early email archive. Corporate governance and compliance became a key driver after the collapse of organisations like Enron and WorldCom and the introduction of regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley. External and new internal compliance drivers suddenly required the retention of email data across the business.

Businesses quickly began deploying a variety of on-premise applications and appliances to address these needs, while at the same time introducing retention and eDiscovery policies into the organization. But, early on-premise email archives started to grow as more and more email data was collected and retained, and as this volume of email increased so did the requirement for storage hardware.

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The Old Email Archive

As a result, our email management infrastructures have grown significantly. The old archives are now complemented by a vast array of storage, supporting gateways for security, encryption, DLP and stationery management. This is their legacy within the business IT infrastructure and sadly for many the email system has become a burden. The email archive is too large and has become a lump of unstructured data that needs to be carefully watched.

Generally this type of email archive offers no value to the business other than its initial storage alleviation and potential eDiscovery repository. Essentially, a large repository of unstructured data, or big data, the old email archives provide no intelligence and do nothing to enhance their usefulness to the business when stored on-premise. This is the lasting legacy of storing data on-premise in a manner that remains ‘just-in-case.’

This just-in-case mentality limits the ability of any archive vendor, or even archive user, to put their archive data to meaningful use. Most email archives today are concentrated on the job of storing email data and allowing retrieval in a small number of use cases, mostly limited to eDiscovery and compliance. Most Cloud archiving vendors are no further forward either, and have simply allowed companies to transfer the pain of storing data out of the customer’s network and into the Cloud; they don’t provide any more than offsite storage and an eDiscovery search.

Sadly this type of store and retrieve thinking is a one way deposit and provides no real opportunity to leverage the value of the data. Nor is there any mechanism to involve the users’ various sources of information - whether they are on the internal network, private Cloud storage services or more public internet sources. By limiting their scope like this, those vendors, companies and their end users are missing the opportunity to bring their archived data to life in many meaningful ways; this is why the new Interactive Archive has evolved and where a new way of thinking about data applies.

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The New Interactive Archive

Cloud Computing has allowed businesses to deploy solutions that solve long standing IT problems in such a way that information services become more secure, easier to use and importantly much less expensive. The Cloud is giving businesses a way to deploy what were once complex or time consuming applications in a much shorter and cheaper time frame. Many businesses have adopted a Cloud first approach to upgrade and new business systems.

Take email as an example, the Cloud is gradually absorbing all of the on-premise technology that was deployed around the email environment. Email security moved out to the Cloud many years ago, and piece by piece other applications are following. Email archiving in the Cloud has been an approach that analysts like Gartner have recommended for a number of years, and now the growing standard for retention and big data management is Cloud.

Email Management in the Cloud

The analogy that old email archives are the safe deposit boxes of yesterday’s banking systems remains true. Modern banks offer a wide variety of interest bearing products that create incentives for customers, and help them make the most of their money, much like modern email archives that create value in the data they retain. Modern platforms are more – interactive - with your resources, and this is what brings value to the Interactive Archive. It makes your data work harder.

Centralized archival and policy control are often uniquely only available in the Cloud, especially policycontrol for corporate governance. Email management through an integrated or unified platform meansthere is no break in the SMTP chain as email is delivered, or as the administrator moves from gatewayto archive and onto compliance tools - retaining chains of custody throughout. Centralized policy controlthrough a Cloud management platform means the business’s governance requirements arecontinuously met.

Organizations that have allowed end users to bring their own devices onto the corporate network havehad to find ways to extend their policy control onto these devices too. It is here that integration acrossthe email management infrastructure made possible by the Cloud is important. Applying policies for emailarchiving and email security, regardless of the end user’s platform of choice, requires an innovative emailmanagement solution, offering an in-depth level of control and integration across all platforms

The same is true for desktop applications like Microsoft Outlook. Providing end users with deeperintegrations into Outlook that don’t require them to step outside of their normal workflow will vastlyimprove their productivity, and enable them to make real-time use of their personal email archive data.

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Introducing the Interactive Archive

The concept of an Interactive Archive delivered from the Cloud requires a new way realizing value in a computing platform. The Interactive Archive is one that will be deployed from the Cloud, but not all Cloud archives are created in the same way. Simply archiving email in the Cloud only removes the local storage overhead and expenditure, while giving the users a degree of flexibility in terms of access – in fact, most Cloud archives are still about storage and eDiscovery.

The Interactive Archive is about much more - it is about extending beyond this ‘simply-storage’ model by offering to leverage more of the value in the archived data. It is a platform that puts the productivity benefits of using email back in the users’ hands by making their personal archives available in many ways - as well as including sources of information that would otherwise need a change in work flow for end users.

The Interactive Archive is one that acquires and consolidates the user’s desktop applications as a source of information - their web applications and services, their corporate information flows in platforms like email and mobile platforms - then provides a central and single copy under management. Importantly a single view of all these information streams also gives the business a concise, forensic and complete repository for eDiscovery, compliance and business intelligence use. The important concept of ‘instructiveness’ comes from the end users and the business can make use of the data; platforms such as Outlook, SharePoint, mobile devices and APIs all bring new ways to leverage the accumulated data.

Delivering business intelligence back to the organization by leveraging the data exhaust of the Interactive Archive now becomes possible too; in short making the data within the archive worth more than simply an eDiscovery tool.

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The essential components of the Interactive Archive

At Mimecast we’re using the idea of Interactive Archive as an entirely new way of looking at archived data by acquiring the many new sources and streams of data and information that will be collected and consolidated to make up the archive. The concept of an Interactive Archive is built on many components, some of which are modern ways of thinking about the old style on-premise archives, and some of which are completely new in a business context.

For End users

The Interactive Archive must deliver end user-centric features and capabilities that enhance the productivity of users, rather than impede it. Too many on-premise applications simply hinder the end user’s progress. We know from our own research that when faced with restrictive or burdensome technology, end users will jump out to their personal internet based services simply to get their work done.

User-centric features and productivity enhancements should include ubiquitous access and search from all the user’s devices, both desktop and mobile. BYOD or not, mobile devices often only allow an end user to access 30 days of email, with the rest of their mailbox off limits without a new archive app on their device.

End users will also benefit from the unification of their various sources of data and information. Mimecast’s view of the Interactive Archive includes synchronising data from third party source too. Internet based services such as Dropbox, Box.net and other Cloud storage platforms can easily be synchronized into the Interactive Archive. On-premise or Cloud instances of SharePoint and even CRM tools can also be included to complete the array of data that an end user may access during their routine workflow.

For Administrators

Granularity is key to the Interactive Archive. Administrators must be able to set flexible and granular retention controls as well as define a perpetual retention without worrying about performance or scalability issues in the future.

The Interactive Archive must support this level of granularity at the outset and on an ongoing basis, allowing administrators to make changes regularly. This granularity and visibility must also include a comprehensive set of compliance-orientated features that replace the assorted morass of technology that exists on the network, while at the same time offering enhancements and making the job of eDiscovery easier. Forensic level retention of 100% of email data is essential as is the inclusion of 3rd party sources mentioned above. Added to this the Interactive Archive must provide powerful eDiscovery search tools, early case assessment, message exports and complete auditing and reporting tools all within one interface.

eDiscovery has become a key component of many business information management policies. To be effective eDiscovery must be supported across all content and metadata, and support a scalable internet style search with access to all historic data and all live data, created in real time. The Interactive Archive delivers this capability across the classic archive stores like email and files, but will also include other stores and services the end users interact with, for example Microsoft SharePoint.

Metadata from information flows is one key reason why a unified management platform delivered from the Cloud is a stronger solution in terms of compliance and governance. An Interactive Archive will integrate at a gateway level in order to provide business intelligence about the flows of email through the business. A true Interactive Archive must give data back, but not only email, it must also deliver business intelligence value too.

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The essential components of the Interactive Archive

Importantly, introducing an Interactive Archive into your business means the IT department can start to solve problems with a much more long term view.

By deploying an Interactive Archive, the business can finally acquire an email archive platform that works, and one that doesn’t need a supporting tangle of technology or infrastructure management. The Interactive Archive will grow with the business because of the elastic scalability of the Cloud, and importantly, it will continue to offer ways of solving problems for the IT department, thanks to the innovation provided from the vendor.

The Interactive Archive will provide an integrated Cloud infrastructure that allows the business to achieve governance and compliance, while enabling new technologies and working practices that bring even greater levels of productivity across your end users.

© 2012 Mimecast. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WHI-WP-089-001

Mimecast is a leading provider of essential Cloud services for Microsoft Exchange. Mimecast delivers enterprise email management services that include security, continuity and archiving. This suite of services provides total end-to-end control of business email, while minimizing risk and reducing both cost and complexity. Founded in 2003, Mimecast serves thousands of customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, and Africa.