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CommonStore for a Common Problem: Archival of Email Libraries
by Diane Hage
Software Solutions Manager
Datatrend Technologies
 
 
 
2004.  A new year with new business objectives, new projects to prioritize and implement, and new budgets to manage.  What are the buzz words you’re hearing about and expected to manage to this year?  In this quarter’s Software Corner, I’d like to share with you one topic I hear frequently as a concern from our customers: 

E-Mail Management and Archiving
Nearly every customer I speak with this year has some issue regarding the rampant growth of their e-mails.  In addition, for some customers, there is a new concern about putting a process in place to ensure historical e-mails are archived and easily retrievable.  This concern may also be a very costly one for your company as well, depending upon the regulatory/compliance rules under which you work.  For example, 5 major Wall Street brokerage firms were recently fined a total of $8,250,000 due to inadequate procedures and systems to retain and make accessible e-mail.  The growth in companies of every industry is estimated to be phenomenal.
 
What are the business issues involved in email management and archiving?
  1. An ever exploding growth of e-mail and attachments
    Radicati Group estimates that the average corporate mailbox currently processes 9.6 mb of e-mail data per data, but it will require 42 MB per day by 2005
  2. Difficulty in ability for your staff to locate e-mail quickly in response to customer inquiries
  3. Storage/DASD increase in costs in response to need of managing mail systems.

Two products offered, along with the right expertise, may help you: CommonStore for Exchange or CommonStore for Domino.  CommonStore is a middleware server between either the Exchange Mail Server or Domino Mail Server systems and the back-end archive management system. CommonStore does not store data or document, but defines and manages what to archive, when to archive, and how to archive.  There is an automatic offloading to the archives, which reduces the requirements to manage e-mail server growth.  It also provides a direct access to archives which lets users view their work via browser, Outlook, or Notes desktop.  Clicking on the URL or stub placed in the original e-mail message initiatives retrieval and viewing of archived items. 

In a nutshell, these products can reduce the size of the mail databases, automate the archive and retrieval process, and fully integrate with Exchange 5.5, Domino v. 6.x and various versions of Outlook as well as Windows services products.  This in turn will significantly improve system performance and reduce e-mail/messaging costs. 
 
Retrieval of archived documents and attachments will be fast and automatic and can be done from Exchange or Notes clients, Content Manager clients, or web browsers. The product provides full text search through archived e-mails to quickly find information and a way to automatically or selectively archive e-mail and e-mail attachments.  This in turn helps reduce the overall cost of operating e-mail systems without imposing limits on the size of users’ e-mail Inboxes.  It also provides a way to manage the retention and disposition of e-mail according to government and industry retention schedules. 

The Growing Size of your Exchange Server File
CommonStore processes e-mail and attachments eligible for archiving and automatically off-loads the server. Two strategies offer smaller capacity requirements and faster performance for your Exchange Server(s):
  • Archive complete mail documents - off-load selected e-mail from your existing Exchange Server to an external archive, moving both attachments and e-mail messages.
  • Archive file attachments only - keep the messages online and archive just the bulky file attachments. When you need them again later, just click retrieve. CommonStore immediately retrieves the files from the archive -- for simple display or for reattachment to the mail document.
You can depend on Outlook’s desktop convenience to eliminate laborious searches in paper files or microfilm archives and keep archived documents at your fingertips.
  1. Outlook desktop interface lets you retrieve virtually any attachment such as scanned images, word processor files, or spreadsheets.
  2. Seamless integration with existing Outlook desktop applications means your Exchange Server users can use the archive system right away -- with little or no training.
  3. Storing Exchange Server e-mail items in native Exchange format lets you extract an e-mail document from the archives, restore it in its original form, and maintain document integrity.

IBM client options also retrieve e-mail items or attachments. You can choose among

  • IBM Content Manager Windows client or e-client
  • IBM Content Manager OnDemand client
  • Standard Web browsers.

Archiving and Document Management Benefits
By managing email archives efficiently, a company gains higher productivity through multiple benefits.

  • Quick retrieval of archived Exchange Server documents. Search times are shortened to merely seconds.
  • E-mail and document content security. E-mails and attachments are protected against unauthorized access.
  • Operating cost savings.  Centrally administered e-mail archives automatically off-load aging items in batches, based on administrator-defined profiles and parameters.
  • Storage capacity.  Optical disk jukeboxes and tape libraries can store billions of documents on a single storage device.
 
These benefits of management profit SAP users as well.  CommonStore for SAP is an e-business solution for data archiving and document management for SAP R/3 and MySAP users, supporting back-end repository to IBM Content Manager OnDemand, or Tivoli Storage Manager.
 
SAP Database Management and Archiving
CommonStore integrates documents into SAP applications such as:
  • SAP Document System (DMS) to allow users to archive in batch instead of one document at a time.
  • SAP R/3 Document Finder for access to documents stored in Content Manager
  • SAP Workflow Integration to start workflow from document capture outside SAP.
Through CommonStore for SAP, we can help you manage to the growth of SAP database volumes. More documents, forms, files, faxes, and printouts need to be offloaded, and we can help you trim the size of the database, improve the database performance, while allowing streamlined access to those business documents.  This product:
  1. Is certified by SAP AG certified for all current releases - SAP R/3 Enterprise, mySAP.com, and SAP NetWeaver framework as a complementary software product for R/3
  2. Is seamlessly integrated with R/3 financial, logistics and human resources applications
  3. Can simply archive SAP R/3 data or incorporate it into an enterprise wide document management system
  4. Supports all SAP operational databases (IBM DB2 UDB, Informix, Oracle)
  5. Uses leading IBM archive systems such IBM Tivoli Storage Manager(formerly ADSM), IBM Content Manager, and/or IBM Content Manager OnDemand.  CommonStore provides communication between SAP and the archive which provides the store and management functions. The CommonStore server does not require the use of any relational database.
  6. Supports all SAP system platforms and manages all types of data and documents defined in the SAP Archive Link.
 
Companies across the board are finding that their email libraries and SAP documents are booming out of control.  Through this time of increasing regulation regarding documentation retention, these resources easily pull compliance together without months of headaches.
 
For more information or specific questions regarding your needs, email me through the TrendSetter editor at feedback@datatrend.com.
Datatrend's TrendSetter eNewsletter
April 15, 2004