The e-mail active-archiving market is beginning to separate into products from vendors that focus on records and content management and products from those that focus on e-mail storage management. Both are important, but many companies are not yet ready to commit to an enterprise content management (ECM) implementation. Vendors have an advantage if they can show that their products can deliver value today and if they can also provide a solid road map to show that the solution will continue to evolve to meet new requirements.

An e-mail active-archiving product provides a searchable archive of all e-mail messages for a defined period of time. It can be used independently or as part of a corporate records repository for legal and business uses. It also can be used as a solution to reduce the size of production e-mail data stores to gain operational efficiencies.

This is still an emerging market, with half of the vendors only entering the market since 2002, but with many more looking to establish a position in the market. The market is still volatile, as evidenced by the number of acquisitions that have taken place. Some of the products have not yet had sufficient time in the market to determine their enterprise readiness. In addition, just when these vendors can claim solutions with mailbox management and compliance capture, compliance supervision and discovery support have emerged as key requirements. Product scalability continues to be a significant issue. The biggest change happening in this market is that ECM vendors have finally realized that a robust e-mail archiving solution that works with their record management solution is a requirement.

Ideally, the selection of an e-mail solution should be made in the context of an overall ECM strategy. However, many companies are not yet ready to make an ECM or a formal corporate record retention decision. Waiting until the enterprise plan for electronic record retention is defined, or for the e-mail active-archiving technology to mature, could place your company at risk. The increased demand for discovery of historical e-mail messages, operational problems introduced by the growing size of e-mail data stores, and the compliance requirements to retain e-mail messages are business drivers for deployment of a solution now.

E-mail active archiving will be one of the many topics we will analyze at our conference PlanetStorage 2005 to be held on 13 to 16 June 2005 in Orlando, Florida. (Please see www.gartner.com for more details.) We have at least five conference sessions that will address this topic. We hope that this Spotlight gives you a taste of the research and analysis you'll see at the conference, the most comprehensive forum for anyone who is grappling with storage issues. We hope to see you there.

Features

"Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Active-Archiving Market, 2005" — Vendors in the e-mail archiving Magic Quadrant were measured on completeness of vision and ability to execute against an expanded list of market requirements and in an increasingly competitive market. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Kenneth Chin

"Assessment Criteria for the Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Active Archiving, 2005" — The criteria for placing e-mail active archiving products in the Magic Quadrant are also the criteria companies can use to do their own product assessment. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Kenneth Chin

"Acquisitions Drive Expansion of E-Mail Active-Archiving Market" — The e-mail active-archiving market saw strong growth in 2004 as Veritas, Zantaz and Open Text made acquisitions and new vendors jumped into the market. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Kenneth Chin

"Companies Choose Different Approaches to E-Mail Archiving" — Three approaches are common for archiving e-mail to ensure records retention — the choice is a balance between cost, employee time and risk of noncompliance. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Kenneth Chin

"Vendor Rating: Zantaz" — Zantaz merged three fast-growing companies in 2004 into a force in archiving and discovery management. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Adam Couture

"North American Companies Slow to Address E-Mail Archiving" — A poll of attendees of Gartner's 2004 Data Center Conference showed that companies were feeling the pain of discovery requests for historical e-mail messages but were slow to deploy an e-mail archiving solution. By Carolyn DiCenzo

"User Survey: E-Mail Archiving Products and Services, North America, 2005" — To better understand how companies and organizations are responding to the need to manage e-mail messages, Gartner undertook a study of 300 companies in North America. By Carolyn DiCenzo and Adam Couture

Recommended Reading and Related Research

"Key Service Providers Deliver E-Mail Active Archiving" — As with independent software vendor products for e-mail archiving, service provider offerings vary greatly in scope, capabilities and service levels. By Adam Couture and Carolyn DiCenzo

"How to Choose the Best Archive Service Provider for E-Mail" — Managed e-mail archival services can be an attractive alternative to building your own capability in-house to meet message compliance requirements. By Adam Couture and Carolyn DiCenzo

"What Is E-Mail Active Archiving?" — E-mail active archiving can improve the performance of the production e-mail system, save messages in compliance with various regulatory requirements, and address legal concerns regarding discovery. By Carolyn DiCenzo and David Mario Smith

"What Constitutes Enterprise Content Management?" — An ECM suite will make sense for most companies, but vendors differ in the number of components they offer and in the level of integration. By Karen M. Shegda, Kenneth Chin, Toby Bell, Tom Eid, Lou Latham, Debra Logan and James Lundy

"Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2004" — Content technologies, such as integrated document and Web content management, have coalesced into ECM product suites; ECM will continue to absorb other technologies, such as digital asset management and e-mail management. By Karen M. Shegda, Kenneth Chin, James Lundy, Toby Bell, Debra Logan and Tom Eid