Ferris Research Survey Finds Email Archiving Is Major New Priority

Email archiving and compliance is shaping up as a major priority for records managers and IT staff, according to a new survey of records managers conducted by Ferris Research, a San Francisco-based consultancy specializing in messaging and collaboration technology.

The report, "Email Records Management Survey: Guidelines, Technologies, and Trends" (http://www.ferris.com/view_content.php?id=653) is based on a survey of more than 400 records managers. This survey data indicates that most organizations have made now email archiving a priority within IT -- with 36% reporting it as a major priority. As recently as two years ago, archiving of email would have been a non-issue in most organizations outside the securities industry.

"Concerns about regulatory compliance are the main reason for the heightened level of interest in managing email messages as business records," said David Via, a research analyst with Ferris Research. "The email inbox has become the de-facto document management system for many professional people, and the resulting growth in message volumes has created a new demand for specialized archiving solutions."

Among the findings in the report:

--  69 percent of reporting organizations have been required to produce
    email records for litigation, government investigations, regulatory
    compliance, audits, mergers or acquisitions, or other official business
    proceedings -- yet 75% indicate they have no technical system in place for
    managing email records management policies. The larger the organization,
    the more likely it has already had to produce email records for legal
    reasons.

--  The largest share -- 35% -- of the respondents have no policy on the
    deletion of email. Approximately 26% have deletion polices that are
    established between 30 and 90 days.

--  76 percent reported that it was very likely or somewhat likely that
    some messages are being deleted before the length of time had elapsed that
    they should be held, according to the corporate retention policy.

Despite the increasing importance of email records management, the greatest challenge that organizations report they are facing with regard to email records management is a lack of necessary funding to address retrieval requests.

Document Management Vendors Control the Market

While no single vendor owns more than 20 percent of the market, document management systems are encroaching on territory initially staked out by specialty email archiving products. For the records managers surveyed, the top ten vendors are:

Documentum Enterprise Records Mgmt.
Hummingbird
Iron Mountain (hosted)
FileSurf (MDY Advanced Technologies Inc.)
TRIM
Veritas
FileNET
Accutrac Email Management System
Legato
DB2 CommonStore for Lotus (IBM)

The large number of niche solutions focused on managing specifically email data indicate that, although there is a market for such solutions, it is also ripe for vendor consolidation.

"We believe vendor consolidation is already well under way, given the recent acquisitions of KVS, eManage, Ixos, and Educom," said David Ferris, President of Ferris Research. "We are actively looking to help some of our clients make the right acquisitions in this space."

Email Records Management Survey: Guidelines, Technologies, and Trends is available from Ferris Research, http://www.ferris.com, for $1,995. People interested in purchasing the report should contact Ferris Research at walter.scheiber@ferris.com, or 415-986-1414x103.

About Ferris Research. Ferris Research is a San Francisco-based market and technology research firm that specializes in messaging and collaboration technologies such as email, instant messaging, wireless handheld connectivity, and virus and spam control. Our main customers are vendors, service providers, and corporate IT managers. For more information, visit http://www.ferris.com/ or call 1 (415) 986-1414.

Press Inquiries: For fastest response, send email to press@ferris.com Or contact: David Ferris david.ferris@ferris.com Tel 011 44 20 7835 1001