Managing email hell: a surge in legal demands for long-forgotten emails is playing right into the hands of Zantaz CEO Steve King - Technology - Related article: CEO Stats - profile of Steve King

Chief Executive, The, May, 2003 by Kim Girard

While analysts say the archiving market is still small, it is expected to grow quickly, with highly regulated health care and pharmaceutical companies the next obvious targets. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, requires that all electronic records be preserved. And the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act defines how individual health records must be kept secure and private.

For King, the job is about building the company one step at a time. Although Zantaz is much smaller than either Amazon or eBay, it appears it will be one of a tiny number of dot-coin-born companies to survive. One key was bringing in a no-nonsense CEO who could focus the company on a specific market and a specific strategy.

But Zantaz also got lucky--the explosion of email, combined with the abrupt shift in the legal and regulatory climate, mean that Zantaz has a real reason to exist. Companies simply have to know what emails lurk within their IT systems and be able to produce them. As King puts it: "It's better to know what's there than to see your name on the front page of the Wall Street Journal."

RELATED ARTICLE: CEO Stats

Age: 48

Tenure: 2.5 years

Last Job: interim CEO of E*Offering, E*Trade's online investment bank

Family: Wife, two children

"I thrive on creating order out of chaos."

How Zantaz Does What It Does

(1) Company ABC has two years' worth of email it can't get access to because it's stored on backup tapes. Management doesn't know what embarrassing emails exist and can't easily respond to requests for "discovery."

(2) ABC decides to hand their tapes to Zantaz, which uses its software to compress the data. It is then stored on servers in the Zantaz data center and is online.

(3) Zantaz also copies all current email from ABC's servers and sends it to the Zantaz data center.

(4) Authorized ABC employees can gain access to all emails stored on Zantaz's servers by logging on from their desktops. They can search for specific email by name, keyword or date.

(5) Zantaz watches for regulatory changes to ensure that clients comply with the law.

(6) After a defined period mandated by federal rules and the client, Zantaz destroys the email.