Gerard Cummings
Computer Science 312
Professor Wolf
February 20, 2004
Curb
Your Email
As
more parties use email as their primary method of communication, the majority
overlook the fact that email content contains evidence of business decisions,
actions and transactions. These email messages become documents and records
with the same legal requirements as any other record produced. Public and
private organizations are quickly discovering that they have an obligation to
apply the appropriate protection for email created or received, and an equal duty
to provide access to the email.
My article, Curb Your Email [1] by Simon Travaglia, says that email management is a large and rapidly growing industry; Organizations have been slow to adopt this technology due to both the complexities involved in properly managing emails and the sudden explosion in the use of this method of communication. In most organizations today, email management is either non-existent or is done using existing technologies such as email delivery software, document management systems, and/or records management systems. Many organizations are realizing that email management requires specialized capabilities not presently found in existing products.
The evolution in the way organizations are conducting business highlights the need to automatically capture and classify email content in its entirety and native form. Knowledgeable workers must also be allowed to search, retrieve, and manage the life cycle of email within a secure environment. A comprehensive structured email management system provides many benefits including reduced IT costs, reduced downtime, improved ROI (Return-on-Investment) of the messaging infrastructure, and reduced legal costs. By capturing email and organizing, email content is accessible to authorized users thus allowing for better and faster decision making, efficient implementation and execution of business processes, and improved knowledge worker satisfaction. Organizations will have better control over their information.
[1] Travaglia, Simon Curb Your Email, October 10, 2003. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/33698.html>