CLEARWATER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GFI Software, a leading IT solutions provider for small and medium-sized enterprises, today announced the results of an independent survey conducted by Opinion Matters, in which more than 200 U.S.-based IT decision makers participated. The study commissioned by GFI revealed a dramatic lack of adoption of email archiving. 62.4% of SMEs do not currently use a mail archiving solution - opening the door to a host of issues including: limited email backup and restore, which could lead to data loss; an inability to search for pertinent messages in the event of an audit or eDiscovery request – which could result in costly compliance violations or legal suits; strain on Exchange servers; and storage problems.
The survey also revealed that greater than 38% of the 202 businesses polled do not have an archiving or backup solution of any kind in place, further exacerbating the chances that a network failure could result in a complete loss of critical data stored in email.
Additional results from the survey:
- Two-thirds (66.8%) of respondents were unfamiliar with U.S. regulatory compliance standards regarding email archiving. This number ballooned to over 90% in businesses that rely on only one IT professional.
- 37% said they are required to search for old or deleted emails on a monthly basis, if not more frequently, because of requests from end users, the need to meet compliance requirements, the need to provide copies of correspondence for a lawsuit or audit, or any other requirements.
- 31% of respondents said they would consider a hosted approach to email archiving.
Implementation of a mail archiving solution can enable several email-related necessities, including maintaining an archive of all corporate email correspondence, meeting the growing number of regulations for compliance, eDiscovery and other legislation, significantly reducing the demands on the Exchange server, and managing and reducing the company’s dependency on PST files.
“Email infrastructure is quickly becoming a complex beast, and IT administrators have more factors to consider than ever before – including an increasing level of compliance standards that many are apparently unaware of,” said Walter Scott, CEO, GFI Software. “As the survey clearly indicates, IT managers are routinely required to search for specific emails, and without the automated search capabilities that a mail archiving solution brings, they can take up valuable IT staff time to locate. Critical data stored in email needs to be easily retrievable and accessible, for both day-to-day business concerns as well as for good compliance. Finally, taking the risk of not backing up or archiving key data stored in email can be a very costly gamble depending on the type of data your business is dealing with.”
GFI Software offers both an on-premise solution and a hosted service for email archiving. GFI MailArchiver 2011 is the latest on-premise email archiving software from GFI and now offers automatic archive management and faster, richer search, which makes it even better positioned to tackle the pain points of ever-growing storage costs and email discovery. The recently introduced GFI MAX MailArchive, a hosted service sold through managed service providers, delivers a compliance and disaster recovery solution that requires no additional software installation and delivers a high level of resilience by providing geographic distribution of the message store.
About GFI
GFI Software provides web and mail security, archiving and fax, networking and security software and hosted IT solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) via an extensive global partner community. GFI products are available either as on-premise solutions, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both delivery models. With award-winning technology, a competitive pricing strategy, and a strong focus on the unique requirements of SMEs, GFI satisfies the IT needs of organizations on a global scale. The company has offices in the United States, UK, Austria, Australia, Malta, Hong Kong, Philippines and Romania, which together support hundreds of thousands of installations worldwide. GFI is a channel-focused company with thousands of partners throughout the world and is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.
Copyright © 2011 GFI Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are owned by their respective companies. To the best of our knowledge, all details were correct at the time of publishing; this information is subject to change without notice.