Cloud storage has already crossed the tipping point of widespread adoption. As companies adapt to the cloud storage paradigm, opportunities to improve long held processes are being discovered. One of these opportunities is email archiving. As with other areas in the organization, cloud storage offers organizations significant cost savings and productivity gains around their email repositories.
As Amazon famously kicked off the cloud storage “race to zero”, a competitive challenge to the cloud storage market of reducing cloud storage space pricing to zero, cloud storage services from Google to Box have responded by greatly reducing storage costs or simply offering unlimited space for premium plans. Companies that have had to maintain expensive archival storage infrastructure, the unlimited storage represent offers are too good to pass up. For companies that have already bought in to cloud storage, this is especially true and is a clear opportunity to maximize ROI from their cloud storage investment.
The ability to rapidly find the information you need is the benchmark for any useful repository. Few options exist for better archival discovery than today’s modern cloud storage services. Not only have these companies spent millions in indexing and search technologies, they are in themselves platforms from which many other specialized companies are developing cutting edge, search innovation. Meta search and business intelligence companies like Synata, SearchBlox and Domo are just a few examples.
Modern cloud storage usability is light years ahead of traditional email archival systems. Modern services, born in an era of demanding consumers, posses beautiful and intuitive user interfaces, powerful data viewing capabilities, near ubiquitous access options and granularly collaboration capabilities. Cloud Storage ushers in a new age of email archive, one that extends the definition beyond the inaccessible backroom tapes of yore to one of readily shared email content. Given the appropriate permissions, distributed teams can now benefit from historic communications. For example, sales teams can review all email exchanges by the company with a particular client. Lawyers can copy key emails to matter specific folders. All of this information can now be conveniently viewed on the go through mobile devices and nearly any file type attached to a particular email whether a Word document to a CAD file can be read in a browser as a result of powerful HTML5 rendering engines.
"No longer just a regulatory obligation, email archiving is expanding out from the back room tapes and antiquated, arcane software to something genuinely useful for the organization as a whole."
Cloud storage infrastructure from leading players are state of the art and of the highest quality. Offerings from the likes of Google, Amazon and Box meets or exceeds global security standards, including: ISO 27001, SOC, the PCI Data Security Standard, FedRAMP, etc.
Cloud storage companies are highly incented to invest heavily in security. Data security is important to your company but it is completely existential to a cloud storage company where the cost of a breach in terms of broken SLAs and damaged market perception could potentially, depending on the severity, destroy the business. The incentive is strong for cloud storage to maintain the highest standards of security in all its forms, from disaster prevention & recovery, data accessibility to intrusion prevention.
Data Centralization is another important security benefit of using cloud storage as an email archive. By moving the email archive to cloud storage, one less system needs protecting. By centralizing files to a cloud storage system, the company creates a smaller “attack surface” that can be better managed than having multiple distributed repositories. By having fewer systems to protect, management of multiple layered defenses is significantly easier and thus less prone.
If the native security of a cloud storage service is deemed insufficient, a company can readily enhance their cloud data security. Additional layers of defense can be added from any number of a growing list of companies specialized in cloud storage security like Elastica, Netskope, PaloAlto Networks, CipherCloud to name a few.
Finally, who wants to deal with yet another system. If an email archiving system can be moved to the company's cloud storage service the savings extend beyond the costs of software or hardware. Without a separate email archival system, additional savings accrue from less IT training and internal process simplification.
The deployment of modern cloud storage for email archiving is ushering in a new era of record retention. No longer just a regulatory obligation, email archiving is expanding out from the back room tapes and antiquated, arcane software to something genuinely useful for the organization as a whole. Now employees have a means of tapping into the institutional memory and better collaboration with colleagues. The best part is that all the required compliance and security remains, the difference is that it now only costs less and requires less work to maintain. And they say you can't have your cake and eat it too. :)
mxHero is a leading developer of email to cloud storage technology. mxHero’s products and services gives companies, service providers and end users powerful new ways to control, use and analyze email. Apps developed for mxHero’s platform work with any email management program, including Gmail and Microsoft Exchange. Information on all of their Mail2Cloud product line can be found at http://www.mail2cloud.io. More than 3,500 companies with 800,000 users have added mxHero to their email. To learn more about mxHero visit http://www.mxhero.com. Find mxHero on Twitter: @mxheronet and Facebook: mxHero.net
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