The messages are typically then stored on magnetic disk storage and indexed to simplify future searches.
The reasons a company may opt to implement an email archiving solution include protection of mission critical data, to meet retention and supervision requirements of applicable regulations, and for e-discovery purposes.
For compliance support, email records are stored in the archive according to administrator defined retention policies.
From a legal point of view, this is important because once retention periods have expired the message should be purged from the archive.
If a specific email needs to be found for an internal investigation or in response to litigation, it can take weeks to find and costs a great deal.
Virtually all enterprises implement a messaging infrastructure to connect workers and enable business processes.
In the e-commerce arena, employees may require access to email to close sales and manage accounts.
Setting these kinds of retention policies deserves careful consideration as a single email could help a company win a lawsuit or avoid litigation altogether.
As part of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, an email archive can be instrumental in an organization's effort to "get back to business".