Backup vs. Archiving
There is some confusion however, on exactly what archiving is. Raghavan notes that especially for SMBs, there is a learning curve to understanding the difference between backup and archiving. "The purpose of backup is to put something in storage with the confidence that data is being replicated," he explains. "The purpose of archiving is actually to be able to restore, search and retrieve. In other words, if something is in the archive it is not something to be forgotten, but to be retrieved when needed. A lot of SMB customers have not spent time thinking about archiving."
The concept of archiving is not new. Bob Spurzem, director of product marketing for Mimosa, explains that archiving for email was invented by engineers at Digital Corp to help reduce the amount of email in each mailbox. "Recall that a 10MB mailbox in the mid-1990's was common," says Spurzem. He goes on to say that the common email archiving feature to "stub" an email and attachment from the mail server and keep the email/attachment in the archive was an original email archival feature. Today it continues to be the number one feature in email archiving. "In 2002 Email archiving heated up with the SEC rules for archival. This requirement was only for SEC members. It required the email archival products to add WORM disk support and it required Microsoft Exchange to add the "journaling" feature to their product. Together, email archival solutions for Exchange could capture all incoming/ outgoing email for a given mailbox and store the data on non-erasable, non-rewriteable disk." Spurzem agrees that the latest trend for email archiving is legal discovery. "Actually, this trend has been growing steadily for the past several years. The recent FRCP amendments are another significant factor driving the need to archive email for e-Discovery."
For as long as mail systems have been in place, backing up and business continuity have been required. "Archiving started to become important at the beginning of this decade—soon after the dot-com bubble burst and Enron went bankrupt the following summer," recalls Jeff Lock, product manager of messaging storage for Mirapoint. Lock also sees the confusion people have between backup and archive. "An archive answers the question, 'What conversations did Kurt have with Fred between these two dates?' A backup answers the question, 'What did my inbox look like yesterday?' An archive captures communications between parties (messages, their header, and their envelope). It is a tool used for regulations or corporate bylaws. A backup captures messages (messages and their header) that happen to be in a production mail store when the backup took place." If organizations were under the impression that an effective backup solution could take the place of an archiving solution, they would be mistaken. "To use a backup for legal discoveries leaves you open to possibly missing critical information." At the same time, Lock believes that to use an archive to restore a production mail server would probably be overkill. Furthermore Lock says most messages have a very short shelf life. "Most readers delete the bulk of their email the same day it comes in. Some messages might never be captured in a backup."