This article provides a list of software products and cloud-based services used for email archiving.
Email archiving
Email archiving is the act of preserving and making searchable all email to/from an individual. Email archiving solutions capture email content either directly from the email application itself or during transport. The messages are typically then ...
has several objectives: long-term preservation of knowledge, regulatory compliance, legal protection, etc. Those different goals may call for different solutions. For example, the
preservation
Preservation may refer to:
Heritage and conservation
* Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible
* ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
of historical records may require a one-time
migration (change of format) and storage, while regulatory compliance generally calls for the systematic and continuous archival of messages, using a solution that provides storage and retrieval of email over extended time periods.
Different products have been developed to meet those needs. They may be offered as a standalone
computer appliance (possibly in the form of a
virtual machine
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...
), as installable software that can be deployed on the user's premises, or as a
cloud-based service
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a pu ...
. Those products may perform compression, de-duplication, encryption, indexing and advanced searching. They may work with a variety of email data sources (email systems and email storage file formats) and they may also support other types of messaging systems such as
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
or
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
. Additionally, several
collaborative software products (which commonly have messaging components) can also archive the data that they manage; however, those systems are not listed here since they generally do not archive third-party email data.
Components
In addition to a
backup
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...
system, several other components are necessary for a useful email archiving system:
* Message header/
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
.
* Message body and related document attachments.
* Search and retrieval.
* Efficient storage.
* Reliable gathering of email flow.
* Policy enforcement, such as
retention policy.
*
Compliance
Compliance can mean:
Healthcare
* Compliance (medicine), a patient's (or doctor's) adherence to a recommended course of treatment
* Compliance (physiology), the tendency of a hollow organ to resist recoil toward its original dimensions (this is a ...
certification.
Notable products and services
See also
*
Comparison of mail servers
*
Electronic discovery
Electronic discovery (also ediscovery or e-discovery) refers to discovery in legal proceedings such as litigation, government investigations, or Freedom of Information Act requests, where the information sought is in electronic format (often refe ...
*
Electronic message journaling Electronic message journaling is the process of retaining information relating to electronic messages. In this context, electronic messages are defined as any type of electronic communication data structure. Historically this was an electronic mai ...
*
Email archiving
Email archiving is the act of preserving and making searchable all email to/from an individual. Email archiving solutions capture email content either directly from the email application itself or during transport. The messages are typically then ...
*
File archive
In computing, an archive file is a computer file that is composed of one or more files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compress ...
*
Message transfer agent
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Email Archiving
Computer archives
Message transfer agents
Mail servers
Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), or mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using SMTP. The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host ...
Records management technology