CIOIN

Email is the holder and medium of so much information that
nobody likes deleting old messages. Many people use their email
system as a personal fi ling cabinet. Text-only emails do not use
much storage but problems start with attachments.

Most companies impose quotas that limit how much storage each
associate can use for emails. Without these quotas, server disk
drives would overfl ow and email systems would come crashing
down. But they have an unwelcome side effect: users create their
own email archives using PST files.

Private, local PST fi les and personal email archives create a
number of problems for businesses that allow them:

• Attachment multiplication. Imagine you send a 1MB PowerPoint presentation to ten colleagues and they all move that email into their own PST fi le. Now there is 10MB of duplicated data.

• Bloated backups. If each of those PST fi les is stored on a

company fi le server and it gets backed up every day and the IT
department keeps ten days' worth of backup tapes, the original
attachment is now consuming 100MB of backup storage.

• Slow, inefficient backups. Instead of backing up a single

1MB fi le, the IT department has to backup 10MB a day for ten
days. This takes more time and money: the more data there is to backup the more tape is required. Ultimately, backup bloat demands more expensive backup devices.

• Broken backup windows. Most companies backup overnight

but, if backup sets grow too big, there is a risk the backup may
not be completed in time, or that it might overrun, slowing down
normal IT operations during the working day. Round-the-clock
or global operations make it even more important to complete
backups quickly.