New offering gives organizations a better way to handle regulatory, eDiscovery and mailbox size requirements

London – 25 August 2009 – Mimecast®, the email management specialist that delivers SaaS email archiving, continuity, security and policy control, today announced a significant upgrade to its flagship Unified Email Management platform with the launch of  new functionality to expand the scope  of its cloud-based services. The new offering provides the advanced features and capabilities of on-premise email solutions in the flexible, cost-effective SaaS delivery model.

The new functionality helps businesses  address increasing industry regulations and concerns around data retention and e-Discovery. The company’s new archiving, mailbox management and data protection features allow companies to control their inboxes while preventing data leaks.

Mimecast is the first vendor to bridge the gap between SaaS email archiving and the sophistication of on-premise solutions through the introduction of MSE (Mimecast Services for Exchange). This is a lightweight software component which binds Exchange directly with the Mimecast SaaS environment.

Neil Murray, CTO at Mimecast said, “Most organizations are demanding more out of their email management software. This is largely due to the need to integrate email archives directly with Exchange environments for compliance and mailbox management. Mimecast focuses on ensuring that by moving to SaaS, IT managers will not have to give up sophistication of applications or control.”

Mimecast also introduced a range of new capabilities to its Unified Email Management platform such as granular Litigation Hold, Ediscovery Case Management and Message Retention.

Litigation Hold prevents emails that relate to any current or anticipated legal action from being deleted while E-discovery Case Management allows multiple searches to be aggregated together alongside forward collection to provide a complete, legally admissible log of each case. Metadata Removal helps prevent information being leaked by stripping background data such as tracked changes or previously inserted comments out of attachments before it is allowed outside the firewall.

“E-discovery and document retention requirements, combined with increasing volume, make email management difficult for legal practitioners and their IT staffs,” said Fish & Richardson Principal Nancy Stagg. “Law firms and corporate law departments must contend with many related compliance issues, including the storage of email evidence, review of large user personal storage files (PST), documenting email keyword search queries and maintaining and authenticating proper chain of custody.   Additionally, these issues, and the time and expense that can be associated with managing e-discovery, can cause tension between corporate organizations and their outside counsel. Mimecast empowers companies and their counsel by providing a comprehensive solution that addresses these e-discovery needs, using an intuitive user interface in a simple, SaaS-delivered package.”

The company also announced several new features to improve the user experience. Folder-based replication enables users to retain a consistent view of their email whether accessing it direct through the server or through Mimecast webmail. Flexible Email stubbing enables companies to set up policies that facilitate greater control of mailbox size. It leaves a link in a user’s inbox yet the full email or attachment remains in the cloud until the user needs to access it. The addition of folder based retention provides the central enforcement of policies that pinpoint the types and categories of information and determines where and for how long the information is maintained. Additionally, users can apply granular corporate policy based around retention folders and associated retention periods.

Brian Babineau, Senior Analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, said, “According to our research, eighty percent of electronic discovery events involve e-mails and messaging applications – when compared to other business productivity software – messaging is expected to have the greatest impact on server and storage spending over the next twenty four months.The recent additions to Mimecast’s portfolio directly address these challenges leading to benefits that are largely only available via on-premise e-mail management offerings.  ESG is very excited to see the parity between all message management offerings regardless of how they are delivered (SaaS versus on-premise) as it gives customers more choices and opportunities to lower e-mail capital and operating expenses.”

“With these enhancements, customers now have access to a set of cloud computing services that match if not exceed the capabilities of in-house solutions,” said Peter Bauer, Mimecast CEO. “IT decision makers can feel confident in transitioning to cloud based email services from Mimecast knowing that they will have functional parity as well as all the other benefits of cloud based services.” Bauer continued, “This is particularly important with critical services such as email which are a fundamental part of the way an organization operates.”