Today, email is the primary means of communication for any organisation and emails and their attachments can contain a goldmine of information, such as contract details, hiring and compensation decisions, and merger and acquisition discussions. The ability to securely archive all emails for future reference can shield organisations from loss or damage. For example, whilst larger firms face more onerous regulatory compliance requirements than their smaller counterparts, any organisation can be the subject of a dispute such as an internal investigation over the conduct of an employee or a disagreement over a contract or payment terms.

Early email archiving systems were developed with the need of larger organisations in mind and were often focused on specific niche verticals, particularly financial services. Today, there is a much wider choice and email archiving systems based in the cloud makes the use of archiving services available to organisations of any size in any walk of life.

The rise of cloud computing has changed the economics of investing in technology. Rather than purchasing software licences and the hardware to house the technology in-house, organisations now have the option of subscribing to services from a third party provider based in the cloud. This requires lower upfront investments and provides organisations with access to technology services that were previously only within the reach of large organisations with substantial budgets and the resources needed to install, administer and manage in-house systems.

Bloor Research has just released a series of three short papers that discuss the need for email archiving, what a cloud-based email archiving service must provide and the benefits of a cloud-based email archiving service.