Opening email archives to the new world

One of the big services that Big Data analytics can provide for its users is in working with the source material that forms the `meat and potatoes’ of CRM systems, and the wider issue of understanding and managing the whole customer experience. The one trouble with social media is that it can only give an historical perspective that goes back a few years, while many businesses have `histories’ with customers that stretch to the dim and distant past.

The best source of that information is a company’s email archive, and most have them. But they are not always held in a form that is available to the world of the cloud and new big data tools. Even those products that provide analysis of email archives, such as HP’s Autonomy, may not now be flexible enough to meet all the information needs for building comprehensive pictures of customer experience.

So getting existing email archives, which can be treasure troves of insight into what customers have thought about a business over the years, into an environment where they are useful is becoming an advantageous trick.  

This is the target market of archive migration specialists, TransVault, which has recently announced a new dedicated data connection for its Migrator toolset that works with the on-premise email archive that is part of Autonomy’s Consolidated Archive (ACA).

This completes a line-up of six separate connectors that are specifically aligned with HP Autonomy email archive products, both current and legacy.

TransVault’s solutions help organisations protect the integrity and accessibility of their email records as they move between different archive platforms. Migrator’s part in this is to transfer data between incompatible and often competing archive platforms, as a fully-audited and compliant transaction. It also ensures the move is as transparent as possible for email users, who fully expect to be able to retrieve their archived email post-migration with zero inconvenience.

"The need to migrate email archives is driven by multiple factors,”  said TransVault CEO Barney Haye. “Right now the cloud is behind a lot of migration activity, with enterprises looking to release the costs associated with maintaining an on-premise archive. Vendor end-of-life announcements for 1st-gen products and the customer’s desire to switch to more advanced archiving and eDiscovery propositions are also a catalyst.”

The first dedicated enterprise email archive products entered the market over 13 years ago and have since become a common way to address email storage overload and compliance needs. Myriad industry giants now offer email storage, records management and eDiscovery capabilities in what has become a hotly-contested market.

“HP Autonomy has a range of high-quality information governance propositions, however some of their previously-acquired archiving products are now in maintenance only mode, with ACA positioned as a replacement. Ultimately our products give CTOs the confidence to store their email records in their preferred archive platform without risking vendor lock-in as change occurs,” Haye observed.