Overview

The “archiving” process is not new to many IT managers and Domino administrators because the product actually has a like-named capability. While the Lotus Notes “archive” function does allow users to remove messages from their inbox database and store them offline in a file (NSF), this does not help address growing storage requirements or centralize content for records management and legal discovery purposes. Some would even argue that built-in archiving capabilities limit message accessibility because the NSF files are not immediately available to employees.

Many organizations believe that using Domino’s “archiving” feature or saving backup tapes for elongated periods of time is the right way to cost-effectively address long term information retention and accessibility requirements. And they were when alternatives were not available in the marketplace. The definition of archiving has evolved in large part due to rapidly evolving external market trends such as compliance and legal discovery as well as unpredictable storage growth. This demands companies take a new approach to archiving with many “purpose-built” solutions seamlessly integrating into Domino environments to minimize impact to the primary application.  Symantec Enterprise Vault is an example of a purpose-built offering that continues to be well adopted in the marketplace as a next generation archiving solution—and the provider continues to enhance its support for Domino users.

At first glance, the Domino-specific enhancements to Symantec Enterprise Vault 9.0 may not generate the same levels of enthusiasm as when the long-time archive solution provider added Vault Cache (improving employee access to archived messages from within their e-mail client regardless of if they are online or offline) or User-based Retention Folders (allowing IT to create specific folders with predefined retention policies and pushing them to specific employee inboxes to aid in record and project management tasks). However, the most recent release includes several extremely valuable capabilities that address emerging challenges Domino users are beginning to deal with as a result of ongoing e-mail management market dynamics.

Market trends such as rampant archive data growth, more demanding electronic discovery requirements, and evolving end-user archive access requirements helped Symantec prioritize Domino-specific development efforts that resulted in capabilities that:

• Minimize the archive-specific operational burden on IT even as the environment scales.
• Enable broad-based capture and retention of messages across Domino.
• Facilitate a transparent and friendly experience for any constituent interacting with archived content via Domino Web Access or through the Lotus Notes client directly.

Now we will examine the specific features that deliver these benefits and the value they will bring to Domino users who standardize content archiving processes on Symantec Enterprise Vault.

E-mail Management and Archive Trends

ESG believes that Lotus Domino users should consider altering their archive processes and technology strategies given the specific e-mail management issues occurring.[1] Those e-mail management challenges drive the need for more modern archival methods. Archive-specific environment concerns, detailed below, are also arising as deployments grow and mature.

Dealing with Capacity Growth

In ESG’s most recent e-mail archive market survey, 40% of organizations stated that they were experiencing over 20% annual primary e-mail storage capacity growth.[2] As these messages are archived, the secondary storage environment expands rapidly. In that same study, ESG found that the average enterprise organization’s archive repository increased 500% between 2005 and 2009. Organizations must now find ways to properly (and consistently) expire messages when retention policies end. While this will not entirely offset archived capacity growth, it does reduce risk and help keep archive storage requirements under control.

The other concern with rapidly growing primary e-mail environments is actually completing backups on time. In fact, in ESG’s data protection survey, keeping up with capacity to protect is the number one backup challenge, and this issue is pervasive in e-mail.[3] When dealing with large mailbox databases, IT usually will seek out any technology that can expedite data protection operations because the alternative—leaving e-mail environments exposed to corruption or data loss—is not an option.

Broad-based Compliance and Discovery Requirements

In previous general purpose archive research projects, ESG uncovered three major themes with regard to electronic discovery and records management and how they impact archiving technology decisions. First, e-mail is frequently a means by which business records are created or shared and, as such, have to be kept in accordance with any record retention regulations a business is subject to. As a result of e-mail’s importance and pervasive use, it is a frequent source of electronic evidence in regulatory and other legal matters and is subject to standard discovery processes including preservation (legal hold). Second, e-mail is not just a communication system; it is frequently used—rightly or wrongly—as a collaboration and content management system. Messages are not only located within employee personal inboxes; they are in personal archive folders or “mail-in” databases. These messages are also subject to compliance and discovery requirements. Third, other content types such as Instant Messages, files stored in formal document management systems, and database records can also be considered business records or may be subject to discovery mandates or both.

The E-mail Access Evolution

When purpose-built e-mail archive solutions first came to market nearly a decade ago, the only teams needing access to retained messages and attachments were compliance and legal departments. Times have certainly changed. Now, employees want to access archived messages as some contain valuable information that can be useful in certain projects or business intelligence/reference situations. Mobile devices as well as Web access (DWA and iNotes) are becoming the preferred methods of interacting with primary messaging environments. Some organizations are demanding that archived e-mail be accessible via mobile devices; employees must have seamless access no matter where content is stored. This speaks to a larger trend of IT departments trying to make primary and archive e-mail environments transparent to the user in an effort to minimize the amount of training they need when deploying an archive solution.

Enterprise Vault 9.0 Meets the Challenge

The newest version of Enterprise Vault includes feature enhancements that address the aforementioned market trends.  For example, integration efforts with several new storage system solutions have been completed, giving customers even greater selection when it comes to determining where to ultimately keep archived messages. This integration enables the Enterprise Vault single instance storage capability to interact with several back-end systems, including those that support deduplication, mitigating the size of the archive storage repository and potential operational burden that comes as new messages are added to it. Symantec has also extended archive support for several content types, including Microsoft SharePoint, facilitating compliance and discovery processes beyond e-mail. Some of the new capabilities are specific to Lotus Domino environments that make it easier for customers to deal with evolutions in the marketplace.

Automated Archive “Cleanup”

As messages are archived from Notes by Enterprise Vault, a shortcut is left in a user’s inbox so that it remains accessible despite being stored in separate environments. As primary e-mail capacity increases and is subsequently archived, the number of shortcuts within an inbox will grow. Over time, the messages associated with these shortcuts will be deleted as retention policies expire. In other cases, IT may want to remove shortcuts from an employee’s inbox just to reduce the amount of items stored. In these circumstances, the messages still exist in Enterprise Vault, but employees no longer have “double-click” access to them because the shortcut is gone. Employees will now be able to more efficiently search large quantities of content from across their archived content. Compliance officers, in-house counsel, and other authorized users will still be able to search for messages without shortcuts by accessing Enterprise Vault via the Compliance Accelerator or Discovery Accelerator applications.

Enterprise Vault enables administrators to establish archive management policies to automatically delete “orphaned” shortcuts—shortcuts that do not have an associated message—and to delete shortcuts based on predefined criteria such as age.  This eliminates the burden on employees to manage shortcuts and makes it easier to control inbox item counts. With fewer items in an inbox, backup and synchronization tasks complete much faster. This capability is critical to optimizing an archive implementation as message volumes continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Coverage of All Inbox and Mail-in Database Content

Many organizations leverage Domino mail-in databases to foster e-mail sharing amongst employee groups. Many times, employees store business records and other important documents in mail-in databases. Legal departments often use mail-in databases as temporary legal repositories, asking employees to place relevant messages so that attorneys can view them. Enterprise Vault now captures, either through its mailbox management service which runs on the Lotus Notes client or Domino journaling, all messages sent and saved within mail-in databases. Once in Enterprise Vault, these messages can be retained according to compliance mandates and can be easily preserved and reviewed to meet electronic discovery requirements. As a result, compliance and discovery processes are consistently executed across all messages within Domino, reducing the possibility of noncompliance or neglecting key evidence.

To ensure that archived messages from mail-in databases remain secure, Enterprise Vault consistently synchronizes user access permissions with the primary environment. Only those that can view and interact with messages within the primary mail-in databases can do the same with the archived content.

Common User Experience

Employees can access archived messages directly from their Notes inboxes via shortcuts or Vault Cache features.  Archived messages are also available via DWA for those that choose to use the Web to work with mail. Archived messages are even available via mobile devices. Regardless of which method an employee chooses, working with archived messages mirrors that of reading, forwarding, or replying to a standard non-archived e-mail.

IT departments usually have to make tradeoffs between introducing solutions that solve real business and operational challenges and negatively impacting productivity. Such a decision is a non-issue when deploying Enterprise Vault to archive Domino environments thanks in large part to the investments Symantec has made in providing a common user experience regardless of whether a message is stored in Notes or an archive.

Traditional Archive Benefits Still Apply

Although this brief does not specifically focus on all of the benefits a Domino user can achieve by implementing Enterprise Vault, it is worth noting some of the positive impacts an archive can have in an organization including:

• Faster backup and recovery. As Domino customers regularly migrate subsets of messages from employee inboxes to the archive, the associated databases become smaller. Some customers may choose a default inbox database size and archive messages as it hits the threshold. With less data in the inbox, backups of the database can complete much faster, reducing the risk that certain information is unprotected in the event of deletion or corruption.
• Streamlined electronic discovery processes. E-mail is a common source of electronic evidence—identifying, collecting, and reviewing growing volumes of messages continues to be an enormous burden on IT and legal departments. With an archive, organizations can place messages on legal hold and focus search efforts on one environment rather than a plethora of sources including personal archives (which can be stored anywhere) and backup tapes.
• Enhanced Domino application performance. Similar to the backup benefit, if inbox databases have fewer items, searches, sorting, and synchronizing activities will complete much quicker. This improves the overall user experience, which in turn improves productivity and hopefully reduces IT support calls related to perceived Lotus client issues.

The Bigger Truth

A few years ago, organizations evaluated purpose-built e-mail archive solutions based on the e-mail management challenges they faced. Now, companies have to take into account how a specific solution actually makes it easier to optimize the archive environment given how large these repositories are getting, evolving legal discovery and compliance requirements, and changes in user access methods. Symantec has made substantial progress in addressing these challenges for Lotus Domino users so they can maximize the return on their archive investments.

[2] Source: ESG Research Report, E-mail Archiving Market Trends, May 2010.

[3] Source: ESG Research Report, 2010 Data Protection Trends, April 2010.

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