The impending launch of Microsoft Exchange 2010 got quite a few SaaS vendors worried when they first heard about it. The new built-in archiving features of the platform were one of the main reasons they were in business.
I don’t think it is the end of SaaS email archiving services, not by a long shot. Firstly the email archiving is basic, and requires the clients to use Outlook 2010, which isn’t out yet except in beta as part of the Office 2010 suite.
Secondly using Exchange 2010 involves a significant investment in hardware, software and support. Something which many organizations just can’t afford right now. Considering many vendors offer the equivalent benefits already for a much lower cost, take up of Exchange and Outlook 2010 is expected to be limited for a year or so. Or at least until the economies of the world pick up.
The Exchange archival model also depends on the storage capabilities of the company. Unless many companies drastically improve their storage solutions, mailboxes will be limited, or restricted and the archive facility will lay idle. While hard drives are relatively inexpensive, they are still an added expense.
Many organization don’t allow full-text indexing on their Exchange servers. We all know this puts quite an overhead on the Exchange server, and will only work efficiently on low scale or low use platforms. Larger scale organizations simply can’t afford the slowdown in performance full indexing involves. The multi-mailbox search in Exchange 2010 depends on full-text indexing to work, therefore is largely useless.
Email archiving is based on three requirements. Storage, discovery and compliance. Exchange 2010 only addresses two of these concerns and those only on a basic level. The storage needs a hardware solution to make it work. Exchange has done much to improve how it handles storage by allowing multiple copies of databases, mailboxes and data. E-discovery is only addressed on a basic level, and as we see indexing involves compromises. Also emails can only be copied to another mailbox, not extracted from the system and provided immediately.
Compliance isn’t even touched by the new platform, so many organizations, especially those regulated by the SEC will still need a third party solution.
Exchange a made great strides in increasing management, usability, scalability and seems to be trying to drive down the cost of ownership. There are compromises though, the initial installation will cost a lot, both in time, resources and money. A new infrastructure will most likely be needed, involving the hardware, software and network. Then training for the support staff, as the new platform has many new features, and ways of doing things.
So SaaS email archiving vendors don’t have too much to worry about just yet. It’s going to be a year or three before Exchange 2010 is rolled out across the globe.