When Is It Time to Upgrade My Email Archiving Solution?

Hardware is typically upgraded when it malfunctions or when it becomes too slow to meet users’ increasing demands. In information archiving, old hardware is not the only reason to look for an upgrade. Here’s a short overview of upgrade types in archiving and how to know whether you need one.

Upgrading from Backup to a Real Archive?

There are organizations (usually small businesses with limited IT infrastructure) that still rely on servers or email client’s built-in archiving features to preserve their business correspondence. Luckily, both SMBs and enterprises in non-regulated industries are becoming aware of the drawbacks associated with such an approach to email retention.

Firstly, your messaging software’s built-in archiving features simply do not have the capabilities to perform extensive and demanding searches nor can they guarantee that you’ll be able to locate files with precision necessary for urgent needs such as eDiscovery. Only dedicated, third-party archiving solutions possess features such as advanced search, legal hold or rules ‒ functionalities that allow you to manage, search and retrieve your data in record time, without stressing out and paying through the nose for data retrieval.

This brings us to the second bad practice ‒ storing your email on a live server. Email data takes a lot of space. The more storage you have, the more maintenance and resources it will require. If you choose not to archive your enterprise information and leave it on your server, you’ll soon find the server slowing down or becoming overloaded. You’ll need to install additional servers to prevent system failure and keep up with the demand.

This can all be avoided by deploying an archiving solution that will relieve the pressure on your email server, eliminate the need for multiple hard drives and backup, provide unparalleled archiving options and help you streamline your operations.

Lacking Storage Space on your Existing Archiving Appliance?

One of the major advantages of cloud-based archiving solutions is that they offer unmatched flexibility and bottomless storage. On-premise archiving solutions contain hardware that, no matter how advanced, offers limited space for storing your enterprise data. You’ll probably get the dreaded notification once your archiver is approximately 75% full.

With some providers, you’ll have to purchase a new archiving appliance and connect it with the existing one in order to be able to search through both. Alternatively, you could purchase additional storage such as Jatheon Xpand ‒ a smart and affordable upgrade option that allows you to add storage without having to pay for the whole new appliance.

Dissatisfied with your Current Archiving Solution?

You can always upgrade by getting a new, more comprehensive or advanced archiving solution. If you remain with the same vendor but switch from on-premise to cloud, don’t hesitate to ask for advice from your archiving company. If they understand your unique challenges, industry-specific retention laws and policies you need to implement, they can provide expert assistance and help you choose the best plan for the optimal price. If you’re dissatisfied with the service you’re currently getting from your archiving company, take time to explore alternative vendors and pay special attention to hardware, pricing and how each of them deals with support and maintenance.

Hardware Too Old?

Having a dysfunctional hard drive or losing your archived data is impermissible in information archiving. To prevent failure, on-premise archiving solutions typically contain server grade hardware ‒ powerful and durable hardware components that contain redundancy mechanisms and self-healing properties. Still, after a few years, the maintenance costs start to exceed the costs of getting new hardware, which is why it’s generally recommended to plan its EOL after four years.

In Jatheon, we understand that it’s a hard decision to invest into an archiving solution that features expensive hardware that will still need replacement after a couple of years. To keep you ahead of the technology curve, we designed a unique monitoring, tech support and maintenance plan ‒ Jatheon Care. Apart from offering state-of-the art archiving appliances, we continuously monitor them in order to detect even the slightest of problems and offer free hardware maintenance and software updates.

The best part of Jatheon Care is that our clients get a brand new archiving appliance every four years. You’ll get the same storage for your enterprise information, but it will be stored on a new appliance, equipped with a new processor, faster RAM memory and other components that will improve the performance of your archiving solution. In other words, you’ll never have to worry about hardware upgrades, because we’ll take care of that for you and do it for free.

Need more functionalities?

Business communication is no longer only about email. A large portion of what we communicate, including sensitive information, is done via alternative channels ‒ internal or external IM systems, social media or mobile. The majority of businesses in regulated industries are aware that they need to archive email, but only 2-20% archive the rest. It’s possible that your organization currently has an email archiving solution that can no longer satisfy your compliance and eDiscovery needs. To stay compliant with regulations that now include social media and mobile calls and texts, you’ll need to upgrade to a next-generation archiving solution that can keep up with the new requirements.

Here in Jatheon, we integrated our social media and mobile archiving modules into our existing email archiving software. This means that you’ll be accessing your entire archive from a single interface. Such an approach is cost-effective and it requires no additional training for your employees. Once activated, these modules will simply appear as new functionalities in your archiving software.

In summary, there are various types of hardware and software upgrades that your IT team will have to consider in order to ensure an effortless archiving process. Some of the upgrades can be avoided depending on your archiving provider’s maintenance packages. Continually assessing your archiving needs and aligning them with updated compliance laws and requirements is a necessary step that can help you plan for upgrades.

If you need more information or wish to upgrade your current archiving solution, feel free to contact us and get assistance from our experts.

About the Author

Steven Tobolar

Steven Tobolar is Jatheon’s Head of Tech Support and an experienced engineer specializing in large-scale migration projects, AWS, Exchange Servers, and Microsoft Azure. Outside work, he enjoys reading, movies, off-road driving, and mountain biking.