Hybrids: On-premise and Cloud-based Email Archiving with Mimosa
Posted by Nick Mehta on Tue, Jun 23, 2009 @ 12:37 PM
As some folks know, I previously spent several years in the on-premise email archiving industry. And while I'm now an unabashed fanboy of cloud-based technologies, I've been in both worlds long enough to realize that each model has its trade offs.
On-premise archives provide a number of unique benefits including:
- Tight integration with internal systems
- Complete control for IT
- Archiving of other internal content sources beyond email (e.g., file servers)
In contrast, cloud-based email archiving offers:
- Limitless storage and indexing leveraging the economies of scale of the cloud
- Flat, predictable pricing
- Secure, external access for reviewers
Many customers gravitate fully to one camp or the other. But we are seeing an increasing number of clients interested in achieving the best of both worlds to address a couple of key challenges:
- Managing cost to store an ever growing volume of email driven by longer and longer retention periods
- Automating export and review of responsive content to parties outside of the company
To this end, today we announced the BETA availability of LiveOffice CloudMerge for Mimosa NearPoint, an integration with our friends at leading email archiving vendor Mimosa Systems.
CloudMerge for Mimosa NearPoint automatically pushes some or all of the data from the on-premise NearPoint email archive to LiveOffice's secure cloud-based archive on a regular basis.
This integration, detailed here, gives customers two key benefits.
Benefit 1: Tiered Storage to the Cloud
Older email messages can be aged off of the on-premise archive and stored securely in LiveOffice's cloud-based email archive. In this way, the cost and size of the on-premise archive storage can be capped while maintaining easy access to your content, thereby:
- Providing an alternative to new on-premise storage purchases
- Automating migration of data between storage platforms as data ages in the archive
- Leveraging the unlimited storage pricing model of LiveOffice's archive
Benefit 2: Secure, Open Review through the Cloud
A subset of records can be transferred securely from the on-premise archive to LiveOffice's cloud-based email archive. This eliminates the need for manual exports and shipments from the on-premise archive and allows outside counsel, legal partners or any outside reviewer to search and iterate on a subset of the data in the archive.
For example, imagine that I receive an e-discovery request from outside counsel. Without this solution, I would have to spend time manual exporting the initial data set and copying it to a DVD before shipping it to the requestor. There would likely be subsequent requests to modify the search criteria so I'd have to repeat the export and shipping process again and again. But CloudMerge changes that process entirely. Now, I'm able to seamlessly move each desired data set from the NearPoint archive to the LiveOffice archive on-demand. The requestor is provided with a login and password and is able to access the data set almost instantly (without ever gaining access to my network) and perform their own customized searches.
For more, please check out this page.
Huge thanks to our partners at Mimosa Systems for their collaboration on this venture.