Fewer Than Half of SMBs Have E-Mail Archiving System

Back in June I wrote about a new software-as-a-service offering that seemed to be a perfect fit for SMBs: an e-mail archiving product called Mail Archive.

Well, at least it would be if more SMBs were more interested in e-mail archiving. An eMediaUSA survey indicates 53 percent of U.S. SMBs have not implemented an e-mail archiving system. Of those with a system, 35 percent ask users to maintain their own archives.

The reasons offered for not having an e-mail archiving system: company too small to need one, mentioned by 26 percent of respondents; no budget (26 percent); e-mails stored on the mail server (23 percent); and not affected by compliance regulations (21 percent).

There's a bit of a disconnect, however, since 40 percent of respondents do not consider themselves sufficiently informed of compliance and e-mail archiving issues. Says David Vella, director of product management at survey sponsor GFI Software:

For businesses around the world, e-mail has become the primary means of communication with people inside and outside of the organization. Yet businesses fail to realize that each e-mail communication sent or received is probably the only record they have of important transactions with a customer or between members of staff. ... E-mail contains the bulk of the information that individuals use on a daily basis, therefore, the amount of corporate knowledge stored in e-mail is enough to justify its safekeeping over long periods of time.

(GFI has an obvious interest in the topic since, you guessed it, the company sells archiving software.)