Killer App: new email requirements are driving significant technology purchases. (Enterprise Applications).

A recent survey revealed that 60 percent of an organization's intellectual property is in the email system. Yet most organizations don't have a strategy to capture, organize or leverage this knowledge. Protecting this valuable corporate resource cannot be left to chance. An organization needs to store and manage this most critical corporate asset in a centralized, organized manner. Executives know that if sensitive or top-secret documents are leaving the organization, either intentionally or unintentionally, the company can be sued, confidential information can be leaked, or the organization is at risk for major liability.

Compliance Is Proactive

Ensuring compliance to email security policies, governmental regulations like HIPAA and SEC compliance standards, and other regulatory pressures, makes sound fiscal sense. The cost in public embarrassment, reduction in brand equity and stock price, and risk of fines and lawsuits is too great to leave compliance to chance.

When Email is Legal Evidence

When email is subpoenaed and becomes evidence, it can be very costly to respond in the discovery process. A recent case, Linnen v. A.H.Robbins Co., Inc., cost the Massachusetts company more than $1.1 million to search backup tapes for only 15 mailboxes. While spending up to $73,000 per mailbox may be unusual, organizations can spend weeks and tens of thousands of dollars or more to find the subpoenaed emails. Moreover, the number of hours required by IT to search email records can amount to days or weeks of valuable time.

Inappropriate Email Costs

Storage of MP3 files, pictures and other large attachments of a personal nature take up valuable and costly corporate storage space on the email server. These emails can be forwarded through the system, potentially slowing or disrupting the delivery of critical business communication. An individual spam message can cost anywhere from 3 to 8 cents per item in IT resources, lost revenue, and decreased user productivity. Virus-laden emails can also lie dormant in the system, waiting to do more damage to the system if an unsuspecting user triggers another outbreak.

Down Means Out!

The messaging system must be available at all times. That means both the servers and also the different types of clients, including Web clients and wireless devices, need to run continuously. IT needs to ensure that when a user sees the email in his or her "Sent Items," that the email is almost 100 percent guaranteed to reach its destination in a timely manner. It's absolutely critical that the system not be experiencing slow message queues and that external email delivery times remain within acceptable tolerances, especially to key business partners or customers.

Future Implementations

Here are some current weapons in the IT arsenal to assure successful management of the email system. Email management can be segmented into two categories: email usage management and email knowledge and storage management.

Email usage management includes:

* Monitoring for availability--There are many products and frameworks that monitor important pieces of the messaging infrastructure, such as services, servers, and message queues. Statistics have recently shown that over half of the IT departments in larger organizations have implemented some type of monitoring solution.

* Secure messaging--Organizations, especially those with extensive security or regulatory requirements, such as healthcare organizations subject to HIPAA privacy regulations, are currently reviewing or implementing secure messaging appliance solutions to authenticate senders and recipients and to encrypt email messages.

* Compliance filters (content review of all email)--Through keyword searches or more robust rule-based filtering, compliance filtering software can assure suspicious emails are reviewed before reaching their destination, both within the organization or outside of it.

* Anti-spam protection (external email)--Filtering technologies such as email firewalls, appliances, and installed software solutions can quarantine inbound and outbound spam while generating as few false positives as possible. This is critical in avoiding delayed delivery of business email.

* Monitoring for delivery and service level agreements (SLAs)--Email pinging software can monitor roundtrip delivery times. For example, an IT organization can use these kinds of solutions to create SLA reports for internal and external traffic, and also monitor specific mission-critical routes for delivery times.

Email knowledge and storage management includes:

* Inbox policy management--Establishing and enforcing inbox limits can be an effective strategy as long as business workflow is not hampered through the policies. Storage growth can be kept under control by limiting inbox sizes, policing the few "space hogs" found in every company, and taking inactive accounts off the Active server. Controls can be forced within the messaging system, or they can be done through external reporting software and gentle reminders from an administrator.

* Retention policies--Retention policies can be implemented in the context of three areas: true user needs, the use of email in the organization, and the nature of the business being conducted. Without a proper archiving and knowledge management system, discussed below, IT may simply decide on the expensive solution of adding more servers to keep up with growing storage needs.

* Email archiving and long-term storage--A significant trend to cut costs and preserve email is a dedicated email archiving solution, which, for example, many financial services firms are currently evaluating and implementing. An optimal email archiving solution should meet the needs of compliance officers, IT administrators, and yes, even the end user. This means the solution goes beyond being a lower cost storage device, and also addresses knowledge and intellectual property management concerns. It should allow each group to store emails based on certain criteria, business vs. personal emails for example. And the archiving system should contain a user interface with specific permissions to allow users to review, search, and review emails relevant to their work.

Taking the Next Steps

To help develop strategies and tactics to respond to the demands of the new email requirements, organizations and their trusted advisors must ask themselves a few key questions such as:

* How critical is email to our business or organization?

* Is email ever unreliable or unavailable?

* How much does spam or inappropriate emails cost the organization?

* Are there any external security or compliance standards we must meet?

* Are current email policies effective?

* How often is email solicited in lawsuits?

* How valuable is the long-term availability of emails?

The answers to these questions will uncover which needs are currently unmet, and drive technologies, priorities, and choices. If you are a trusted advisor, you can take advantage of these email needs by offering services like process and change management consulting, vendor selection assistance, and technology implementation and customization services.

Greg Arnette is CEO of IntelliReach (Dedham, Mass.)

www.intellireach.com