Management Support Cost

Without effective email archiving in place it is time-consuming and expensive to search and restore email databases from backup media. Lacking email management tools makes email applications such as Exchange especially challenging. When Exchange crashes (as it frequently does), administrators must undergo an ugly and labor-intensive restore operation. If they must search archived databases they are forced to dedicate a separate server to the task, and individually search and restore each separate backup tape that might hold a relevant message.

Storage is also a huge issue. Many companies try to stay on the side of the angels by retaining all their emails. But the huge and growing volume of email seriously impacts storage budgets and resources. The great expense is not so much buying it, since relatively cheap storage brings in the initial purchase price at just 20% of storage-related expenditures. But managing it is another story: Email administration tasks, like backups and restores, gobbles up 43% of IT support costs. Companies are adopting and growing their storage area networks to manage their email glut as much as their critical database storage.

Corporate email systems are even harder to manage because of the weight of "personal" emails. Users send overwhelming numbers of personal emails from work, but job hunters and moonlighters beware--court cases surrounding personal emails sent from work have favored the corporations, essentially ruling that when an employee uses the company email system to send an email it is no longer personal and First Amendment rights do not apply. (Tell that to Arapahoe County's Clerk & Recorder. The Colorado man is facing tax misappropriation charges for using the county's email system to send some 600 raunchy messages to his mistress--who is also his assistant. The electorate returned him to office anyway, but his own embarrassed party is trying to kick him out.)

Because email is so hard to manage, corporations largely ignore personal email floods. But not only do personal emails strain storage resources, ignoring emails with sexual or hate-filled content is an invitation to serious lawsuits.