The Datacraft archival email solution works seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino enterprise email systems and enables companies to create an efficient, searchable archive for the retention,management and storage of corporate email.

Datacraft has unveiled a new policy-driven solution for archiving critical email.It addresses the top concerns regarding email archiving, including massive volume of email to be backed up, the time wasted in trying to manage email,inefficient use of storage resources and companies' risk exposure.

"Email has become the primary means of corporate communication, which is both a blessing and a curse," said Andy Cocks, Director of Solutions and Strategy Execution, Datacraft. "From an IT management standpoint, dealing with email presents an increasing challenge, both because of the regulatory requirement to archive critical business correspondence and the fact that email storage needs are growing exponentially.

"Our new solution takes an intelligent approach to dealing with this problem, providing a rules-based engine that applies corporate policies to the archiving of email. The typical enterprise email user already spends more than an hour a day dealing with his or her in-box and doesn't do a great job of deciding what needs keeping. Our solution archives the
messages that matter in real-time and removes a considerable burden from end-users and IT administrators."

According to the Radicati Group, the average incremental email storage requirement for a 1,000-user company will grow from 200 GB per month in 2004 to 320 GB per month in 2008, creating an on-going storage and backup challenge. Faced with storage quotas, end-users often create an email database on their PC, leading to problems with security and reliability.

Datacraft's solution enables these decentralised mail stores to be "ingested" into the email archive to protect existing and historical email according to corporate policy. Incoming email is automatically processed by the archive appliance which checks it for duplication and the need to comply with policy. Email is captured in the Compliance Archival Storage and kept in a compressed format.

Together these measures reduce email storage requirements by at least 50 per cent which, in turn, relieves the load on tape backup systems. As well as handling policy-based archiving the archive appliance also maintains a complete index of email in storage, making it easy for emails to be searched and retrieved rapidly, based on their content.

The Datacraft archival email solution can be used to simplify messaging platform migration and upgrade projects. Datacraft provides a full set of professional services as part of the overall solution, ranging from detailed assessment of archiving requirements,through to deployment and annual checkups to ensure the system remains in synch with changing needs and regulations.

Datacraft is the leading independent IT services and solutions company in Asia Pacific. The company helps clients plan, build and support their IT infrastructures. Datacraft combines an expertise in networking, security,operating environments, storage and contact centre technologies, with advanced skills in consulting, integration and managed services, to craft
IT solutions for businesses.

A member of the Dimension Data Group, Datacraft is listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange and is a component company of the Straits Times Index. Headquartered in Singapore, Datacraft spans more than 50 major offices and has over 1,200 employees across 13 Asia Pacific markets. More information can be found at http://www.datacraft-asia.com