IBM Announces E-Mail Archiving Solution for SMBs

Over on Ed Brill's blog, the announcement of IBM's E-Mail Archiving Solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) is addressed in a new posting. I have a few thoughts that companies considering this product for their Lotus Notes and/or Microsoft Exchange environments should think about before taking the plunge:

1. What are the real e-mail archiving requirements facing your organization? There were a couple mentions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in Ed's thread, and this, on its face, is wrong. SarBox only dictates document retention requirements for public accounting firms, and there is no mention of e-mail specifically. Some SarBox practitioners advocate that public companies mirror the document retention requirements facing public accounting firms as a best practice to protect themselves in disputes and/or litigation. But there is no "SarBox" requirement.

2. Once real requirements are identified, how will you define business records that meet those requirements? Not everything is a business record.

3. If there are no requirements, have you defined policies for e-mail retention and implemented these policies CONSISTENTLY? If not, you may be setting yourself up for legal troubles.

4. If you are running a mixed Domino/Exchange environment, how will this tool , or any tool for that matter, meet your integration needs?

Another thought comes from a posting from a reader who was happy they could now go to their business partner and tell them "what they want". Ideally, your business partner should be making the recommendations in the context of having subject matter expertise on compliance. If they do not have this expertise, you should seek out a partner who understands this space, so you can exercise due diligence (subliminal hint here;-).

Links

* Ed Brill: SearchSMB: Email archiving for SMBs: No experience required