Treating "ESH" (E-mail Storage Headaches)

Just because you have a headache does not mean you need brain surgery. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), 75% of all headaches are Tension-type Headaches or TTH. The AMA's recommended treatment for TTH is simple - relaxation, an ice pack, and massage. No brain surgery. No brain transplant.

Why have we for so long treated so many IT inflictions with the invasive equivalent of surgery or transplants? One such infliction, the E-mail Storage Headache or ESH, occurs when mail storage grows beyond the level a mail server can support but deleting is not a viable option. ESH like TTH doesn't necessarily require surgery to the organization's central nervous system - the corporate network. There are homeopathic or holistic treatments available that treat ESH similar to how non-invasive treatments recommended by the AMA treat TTH.

For years , IT managers facing ESH have resorted to one of these three common treatments:

1. Personal Archives: To avoid overloading the primary care-giver (the mail server), in this "patient-heal-thyself" approach, the patient (user) is asked to make its own PST archives so that mail can be deleted on the server.

2. Backups as an Archive: Again, to avoid overloading the mail server messages are regularly backed up to tape so that storage on the server can be kept below a danger level. Since messages on backup tapes are effectively inaccessible, a patient under this approach must again fend for himself/herself.

The first two treatments are examples of treating pain with a substitute pain - treating the symptom rather than the cause. Although message storage on the mail server is kept below a manageable level, it leads to severe pain elsewhere, in particular with the user.

3. E-mail Archiving Software: Because of the inadequacy of the two previous pain-substitution treatments, some businesses are now turning to special third-party e-mail archiving applications. Most of the popular e-mail archiving software applications however are invasive treatments that are time consuming to deploy and manage and lock the customer to one messaging vendor's application - the IT equivalent of brain surgery.


But alas, relief is available. Homeopathic treatments for ESH are available. By storing messages as standard files while at the same time providing users with searchable access to them, can provide limitless and economical scalability to message storage. These homeopathic treatments can be deployed quickly, easily and cost-effectively. And because they use standard file storage systems, the customer in some cases can even use an existing server on the network as its corporate message repository and avoid the additional cost of new storage.

For a copy of the presentation "Treating ESH", please send an e-mail to info@NorthSeasAMT.com

E-mail Continuity: Combining E-mail Archiving and Disaster Recovery

The integrity of business functions relies heavily on an organization’s messaging system and access to e-mail data. During times of crisis, the ability to access current as well as older e-mail messages can contribute greatly to maintaining regular business operation.

An overburdened messaging system is of limited value during regular operation, but during a crisis or outage, it is unlikely to be of any help with business continuance. The infrastructural devastation that resulted from the recent Gulf coast hurricanes, underscores the importance of effective e-mail continuity for businesses and governments.

Every business must be able to assure business continuity during an outage, and this continuity demands instant access to the corporate knowledge contained in e-mail messages and their attachments. However, one of the main reasons business give for not setting such protective measures is the high cost. Solutions to long-term e-mail storage that are effective, scalable as well as affordable are available. Adding an off-site repository can simple be as simple as changing a configuration setting.

For a copy of the White Paper titled "NorthSeas and E-mail Continuity" go to http://www.northseasamt.com/register_whitepaper_email_continuity.htm