- Software as a Service (SaaS) provider is first to offer a complete solution for major archiving needs: email storage management, legal discovery and regulatory compliance -

New York, NY and London – October 17, 2007 – MessageLabs, a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide, today announced the launch of v3.0 of its Archiving service. A pioneer in the software as a service industry, MessageLabs is the first managed service provider to offer email archiving suited to all three major archiving needs: email storage management, legal discovery and regulatory compliance. 

According to research conducted by Osterman Research, 49 percent of organizations that today do not have an archiving system expect to implement a solution by the end of 2008. Much of the interest in archiving is being driven by rapidly growing email databases — Osterman Research data shows that message stores are growing at an average of 35 percent annually. Inbox size management is a pain point for both IT teams and end users, requiring most organizations to implement mailbox size quotas that are tedious and time-consuming to manage.
 
“Regulations, such as FRCP in the US, plus court requirements place the burden of fast legal discovery of messaging on all businesses,� said Michael Osterman, President, Osterman Research. “According to a recent survey conducted by Osterman Research, the average time investment to complete just one discovery request is 17 person-hours — 60 percent of messaging decision makers considers discovery requests to be a painful or disruptive process.�

Offered as a managed service, MessageLabs Archiving Service safely archives all internal and external email communications while ensuring complete privacy and total data security. The service also provides rapid, on-demand access to email after it has been archived. Customers with legal discovery and compliance needs can continue to rely on MessageLabs for these robust archiving needs while new functionality will reduce storage requirements and lessen the amount of time users spend managing their mailbox size.

“As email archiving becomes a necessary and sought after tool for businesses worldwide, organizations have a choice in using an in-house or hosted solution,� said Jos White, President, MessageLabs. “MessageLabs hosted solution frees businesses from the expense and effort involved with storing vast amounts of email in-house as well as the potential resulting network inefficiencies. With easy-to-use functionality such as search and retrieval, supervision and reporting capabilities, messaging policy set-up and enforcement and 100 percent privacy and data security, MessageLabs satisfies every archiving business requirement with one, comprehensive hosted archiving service.�

Confirming the demand for archiving services over the last 12 months, MessageLabs Archiving Service has increased its customer base by 126 percent and more than 50 percent of those customers now deploy five or more of MessageLabs managed security services, including Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, Image Control, Content Control and Web Security Services, emphasizing the convenience of having all messaging and security services integrated with one vendor.

For US-based investment management firm Segall, Bryant & Hamill, regulatory compliance was the main reason for implementing the MessageLabs Archiving Service.

“Other solid business reasons also played a part,� said Gregg Mehr, MIS Director, Segall Bryant & Hamill. “We wanted an email archiving service that would be absolutely reliable and at the same time reduce the workload of the IT department whose time was being drained chasing misplaced emails. The MessageLabs system automatically and reliably archives and retrieves email with guaranteed storage integrity.�

New and Enhanced Key Features of MessageLabs Archiving Service v3.0 The MessageLabs Archiving Service v3.0 provides an industry-leading, cost effective solution for easy search and retrieval. New and enhanced key features include:

•   Attachment stubbing, an automated process that replaces attachments in users’ mailboxes with references to the archive thereby reducing the amount of storage required in Exchange by leveraging the data already stored in the Secure Archive. Users benefit from unlimited mailboxes and no longer need to spend time managing inbox size. By 2010, 50 percent of archiving implementations will use the archive created for compliance and/or discovery to improve e-mail management through message stubbing, according to Gartner. [1]

•   Microsoft 2007 Support, supports end user search within Outlook 2000, 2003 and 2007 as well as the new Office 2007 document format and Exchange 2007 envelope journaling.

MessageLabs Archiving Service combines five key components:

-   Archiving Policy Engine – provides templates for creating acceptable use, retention and supervision policies and automatically enforces these policies as emails are processed and archived

-   Secure Archive – automatically captures and stores every internal and external email communication in a fully encrypted, tamper-proof, scalable and reliable infrastructure

-   Archive Search & Retrieval – offers advanced, real-time, customizable search features, accessible via a secure, user-friendly, web-based interface

-   Archiving Supervision – enables complete visibility into corporate policy compliance

-   Archiving Reports – accurately analyzes email patterns and behavior within an organization, available anytime via a secure, user-friendly, web-based interface