With much of the emphasis on email backup being in the form of archiving, it’s easy to overlook the place backups have in the modern business. With almost all businesses transacting over email, it’s vital to have accurate records of each and every one of them to ensure the company can survive in the longer term.
Even ignoring the obvious implications of compliance, a company needs to have a professional persona in order to survive in the modern marketplace. Clients don’t accept excuses for lost emails or records. Which is where email backups come in.
While email archives concern themselves with the pertinent data in an email and any attachments, a backup is a complete copy of the system. For compliance purposes, the archive is the preferable solution as it also includes other features that are required to comply. Features such as indexing, search, security and formatting.
Email backups have none of those things, yet are equally as important as email archives. The humble email backup will come into its own in a disaster recovery or building move. Not things that happen every day, but they are things a modern company needs to guard against.
Disaster recovery is one of the most important aspects of contingency planning and vital to keep the company productive during this time. Backups have always been the preserve of IT departments. Since email compliance became such big news, it is no longer a matter for server rooms, but board rooms too.
It is now everybody’s business to ensure the company has adequate records of all its transactions, both as an email archive and as an email backup. One will be used often, one rarely. Even though the email backup will rarely be used, it’s vital that everyone has one.
Ducks
Any company needs to have a professional face to give clients confidence in their abilities. We know that the true quality of an organization is in how they handle difficult situations, and cope when things go wrong. This is where the email backup comes into its own.
The duck analogy is suitable here, where on the surface the duck glides along against the tide, and everything looks calm and capable. Yet under the water, the duck is paddling like mad just to remain in place.
It doesn’t matter what happens behind the scenes, as long as on the surface the organization is seen to cope and recover quickly, all will be well. The email backup allows IT administrators to quickly recover systems and restore productivity. They can not only restore the essential data, like an email archive, but the surrounding files as well, so a mail system can be restored to the state it was in before the situation arose.
An email backup may not be used as often as an email archive, but it’s equally important. While you never have to have to use it, you will appreciate having one if the worst should happen.
Comments are closed.