Interested in an email archiving appliance, but need to build a business case for it? Look no further. Building a business case for email archiving really comes down to understanding the costs associated with the way you currently manage email. This should include the cost of eDiscovery and the legal consequences of not managing email properly.
This kind of information is a necessary part of the business case that you need in order to acquire the resources to create and implement an effective email archiving strategy.
eDiscovery costs a lot
Remember, eDiscovery will become a whole lot more expensive when you need to search through multiple types of email archives or repositories. Deploying an effective email archiving strategy that combines multiple archives will lower the cost of eDiscovery by a significant amount. Designing a strategy that reduces the amount of email that needs to be stored and searched, such as SPAM and other junk mail, will also lower costs and lead to improved compliance.
These cost savings aren’t enough to convince the head of IT management? Well, here are two high-profile cases related to email management gone wrong, both of which ended with million-dollar lawsuits and settlements.
Qualcomm lawsuit ‒ a $891 million settlement
In 2007, a patent lawsuit was filed between Qualcomm and its rival Broadcom. The judge was exceptionally critical of Qualcomm’s inability to produce all email records relevant to the case. The court felt so strongly about enforcing the rules of eDiscovery that it demanded that all 14 lawyers who were working on the case on behalf of Qualcomm appear at a hearing and plead as to why they shouldn’t be individually sanctioned. The lawsuit was eventually settled: to the tune of $891 million. All that because of poor email management.
Intel settles for $1.25 billion
AMD sued Intel in 2005 over monopoly allegations. During the lawsuit, Intel executives apparently “lost” email, which badly affected their defense. Executives thought that all emails, including deleted ones, were being backed up by the IT department. Some employee email messages were also lost because staff had forgotten to move email from their sent folders to archive folders, and the data was subsequently deleted. Intel was shown to have neglected email management throughout the case. The settlement was to the tune of $1.25 billion.
Saving costs and avoiding lawsuits should be among the top reasons to prove a business case for email archiving. To better prepare your business case for email archiving, download our eBook “How To Avoid The High Costs Of Non-Compliance: Stay Compliant with Email Archiving” by clicking on the image below.
