Enterprise email deluge generates 30Tb a quarter

Beverley Head
Friday, 05 March 2010 11:10

Business IT - Technology

Large scale enterprises are receiving 3-5 million emails a day - and although only a small percentage of those communications are of any real value - over 90 days they can add up 30 Terabytes worth of incoming information.

It means, according to John Shackleton, the CEO and president of enterprise content management specialist Open Text, that organisations can no longer afford to routinely store and keep all incoming mail. On a visit to Australia this week Shackleton said 'No matter how cheap storage is there is a finite limit.'

Not that email is the only communication flooding into the enterprise. Open Text this week for example unveiled its range of fax gateways for fax over IP.

For many enterprises - and particularly listed corporations - this flood of incoming information presents a huge storage and access challenge. Organisations need to analyse incoming information, extract any value, and save what is required.

Besides the analysis challenge, enterprises also face a growing compliance and discovery burden.

According to Shackleton 'Toyota knew two years previously about their vehicle recall potential.' Lurking in the vast reservoirs of data which companies were now accruing were 'smoking guns' that enterprises needed to be aware of and manage, according to Shackleton.

Organisations also needed to ensure that they were compliant with a raft of corporate rules from Sarbanes-Oxley to anti money laundering legislation.