Email Archiving and Management report from CMS Watch

OK, this is a must read report if your interested in managing email chaos ! I know, because I have read it already..... :-)

This is another exemplary piece of CMS Watch analysis, not just disecting some of the technology / products available in this space, but concentrating on what you need to know about archiving and managing email messaging, and most importantly, focusing on the possible fit between one of the available solutions and your own specific business requirements.

In my opinion this would be a good read for the 'C' level individual who does not need read the indepth analysis of each product, but does need some hand holding at the high level - the 'EAM' for dummies section, whilst at the same time, if your an experienced Exchange or Notes admin, there is still a lot here for you to get your teeth into.

Of course from a wider ECM / Information Management perspective, you might need to come at EAM from a records management or compliance angle too.

Lets face, when it comes down to it, most organisations are a long way from ECMS based content centric collaboration, full use of Instant Messaging or 'conversational media' such as blogs, email is the lowest common denominator and like all forms of digital content creation (across all media) the volumes just continue to grow and grow !

Email management and email archiving

I have just read with great interest this short piece on "defining email archiving versus email management" by Alan Pelz-Sharpe at CMS Watch.

Its interesting because I early this afternoon I had been chatting with the manager of the 'Content and Storage Services Team' - the techie's who run our ECMS, about getting the Documentum Client for Outlook (DCO) implementation moved up the schedule, as people are asking for it.

I agree with Alan the and previous work he cites, that email management and email archiving are very different, and thats why our ECM tender (ITT / RFP) of 2 years ago specified both. The DCO integration with Outlook at the front end allows individuals to use their knowledge and experience in managing their email, either manually via drag and drop, or automatically by setting up Outlook rules, but the email resides in the main ECMS and not in the dreaded .PST file !

At the back end, at least for this implementation, Legato EmailXtender provides the archiving product, but EMC now markets a 'Documentum Archiving for Email' solution.

Again what was interesting to me was that Alan suggests not many organisations take this 'belt and braces' approach, but we had 'seen the light' more than 2 years ago (but admittedly had been tardy in implementing it).

Possibly even more interesting though, is that we have completed the 'email management and archiving triangle' with a training programme for users, seeing email management as one particular aspect of overall information management, and as per usual in my opinion, the greatest tech' will get you no where if the users are not clear on what they are supposed to be doing with it !