LONDON - Email is the communication backbone for most organisations, from business correspondences to IT support and E-commerce, it plays a vital role in almost all organizations that employ email.

A large amount of formal and informal business data is located in email systems, either as messages or attachments. It is a repository of company history and know-how that organisations need to retain, access and search.

When email archiving solutions were introduced to the market, their purpose was simply to store data and meet rising regulatory compliance.

"At first, hosted solutions charged per gigabyte of storage, which made them very expensive," said Robin Bingeman of Cryoserver, an email compliance solution. "Some thought the data had to be archived off-premises, so they paid for hosted archiving solutions. But a lot of companies discovered it was cheaper to expand their in-house storage foundation to store emails. They did not take into consideration how long it takes to deploy an on-premises archive."

However, in today's ever-growing world of technology, organisations can choose a solution that meets their needs. Your options are on-premises and cloud-based.

So how do you know which email storage solution is best for your organisation? There is no right or wrong answer when choosing between olutions. You have to evaluate your business needs and infrastructure before making a decision.

Cloud-based
The concept of this solution is simple: a service provider processes, manages or stores data in a remote data center. Below is a list of the benefits of using a cloud-based solution:

Predictable costs; uses the best storage technology and updates the cloud as they progress. Pay-as-you-go, monthly pricing; one flat rate per user, per month. There are no upfront costs for infrastructure, hardware or licensing and IT costs are relatively low.

Deployment of the cloud-based system is completed in days, not weeks because there is no hardware to install. The cloud is always available to users, which benefits geographically scattered companies. Easily scalable to add or delete users, which mean you only pay for what you are using. Control permissions, storage, mailbox creation and more in just a few clicks.

On-premises
This solution gives organisations complete custody and control of data. Its benefits are listed below:

Wide variety of delivery models including on-premises servers, virtualized servers, purpose-built appliance and virtualized appliances. Available for virtually every operating system. Offers the ability to use multi-vendor architecture that may limit the risk of data breaches.

Companies can reuse existing servers and storage hardware if they are migrating or upgrading from one email system to another.
On-premises offers one tenant architectures which means you will never have someone else consuming the system resources or have multi-tenant security issues.

"It is important to note that cloud and on-premise solutions are not mutually exclusive delivery models," said the exchange email archive professional. "Many companies have discovered the benefits of utilizing both."

Computing power and storage capabilities are available at a fraction of the cost from two decades ago, which allows companies to have these options, said Bingeman. While your business needs certainly play an important role in your decision, you should also ensure that the solution you choose is compliant and can handle E-discovery challenges.

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