Five reasons to opt for Google e-mail archiving

Got a tight IT budget but still need to securely archive your organization's e-mail to comply with both legal and regulatory mandates? Now that Google upped the amount of time its Google Message Discovery hosted e-mail and archiving solution can store e-mail--from one-year to 10--hosting your e-mail archiving solution in the cloud is a credible alternative. Here are five key advantages to consider:

1. Price. Rather than forking over more cash as message stores (and legal cases) increase over time, Google Message Discovery offers a flat rate of $45 per user per year, making it far easier to plan and accommodate costs as time goes on. Google says in its blog announcing the new 10-year time-frame for storage that on average, most on-premises solutions cost at least $200 per user per year to manage. Plus, there are no storage caps, which means no future outlays to accommodate storage as the amount of stored e-mail increases over time. That's a savings.

2. Search. Google Message Discovery is powered by Google Search. While most e-mail archive tools provide some sort of search, few can match Google's expertise and feature set. The service supports both Exchange and Lotus Domino e-mail stores, and Google says it can search across them using granular search criteria. It's like getting the best for less.

3. Maintenance. Since it's hosted in the cloud by Google, organizations can devote fewer in-house resources to managing and maintaining the e-mail archive. While Google provides in-house administrators with key tools for establishing legal holds and earmarking specific e-mails to archive and delete, Google handles all the storage and maintenanace. No need to buy the latest and greatest upgrade--that's Google's problem. Plus, like many on-premises solutions, it provides key self-service features, in which end users can search for and download specific e-mails from the archival store. No need to bog down an administrator with requests.

4. Training. And speaking of self-service, since the archival solution is cloud-based, all of its features are available to administrators (or end-users, in the case of the self-service features) via an easy-to-use Web browser. No new interface to learn, or train on.

5. Speed. Since you don't need to purchase and deploy all the hardware and software to support the archive, getting it up and running in the cloud is far faster. Just put your unique rules in place and go. Google estimates that most companies can get up in running in as little as a few days.

This isn't to say that choosing a cloud-based e-mail archiving and discovery solution is always the best option. The benefits need to be weighed carefully against the downsides. Putting such critical information in the hands of a third-party, not known for its stellar views on privacy, may not be wise (although Google claims it uses optimal security via Postini). Plus, as Google goes, so do you. If the company decides to significantly up its fees or change its service levels, you're stuck going along or dealing with the pain of migrating to a different solution.

But in the end, e-mail archiving/discovery is not a core competency for most organizations. Offloading it to the cloud saves time and money, and can free your in-house IT staff to focus on your business future, not its past.