There’s no disputing the growing importance of e-mail archiving, as businesses face up to regulatory compliance requirements, e-discovery, and swiftly rising storage costs. With dozens of e-mail archiving solutions to choose from, navigating the vendor landscape is critical as companies assess their near and long-term needs. Before plunking down any dollars, however, companies must understand that they’re not only investing in technology, but in a long-term business partnership.

That’s why it’s critical to recognize the characteristics of industry leadership in e-mail archiving technology. Year after year, top industry analyst firms, such as Forrester Research, Gartner, IDC Corp., and The Radicati Group place Symantec Corp.’s Enterprise Vault as a clear leader in the enterprise e-mail archiving market.

In fact, Symantec is the sole leader in the Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Active Archiving report, and has been for the past four years. According to Gartner’s E-Mail Active Archiving Market Update, 2007, published on May 30, Symantec led the market with a 33 percent market share based on revenue and a 34 percent share of total installed customers. Gartner expects the worldwide e-mail archiving market to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 37.2 percent to reach $1 billion in new license sales by 2010 up from $207 million in 2006.

Numbers alone, however, don’t tell the complete story. To be considered an enterprise e-mail active-archiving vendor, solutions must meet a number of criteria, according to Gartner: the product must provide a searchable archive of all e-mail messages for a defined period of time. It can be used independently or as part of a corporate records repository for legal and business uses. It also can be used as a solution to reduce the size of production e-mail data stores to gain operational efficiencies, such as reducing backup time, improving recovery and eliminating the need for quotas while still keeping the active data store lean. Additionally, the solution must offer mailbox management and compliance capture to ensure that all records are captured in the archive, whether for legal discovery reasons or for the unique compliance supervision requirements of the financial industry.

Symantec, says Gartner, is the clear leader in e-mail active-archive market segment. Not only does Symantec have both the vision and ability to execute, it also surpasses the competition in its ability to anticipate evolving market requirements and to deliver new features.

Today, Enterprise Vault has more than 6,000 customers and more than 8 million seats. Some of Symantec’s largest Enterprise Vault customers archive more than five million messages each day.

A software-based intelligent archiving platform, Enterprise Vault 2007 stores, manages, and enables discovery of corporate data from e-mail systems, file server environments, instant messaging platforms and content management and collaboration systems. Using intelligent classification engines to manage data Enterprise Vault improves a company’s ability to retain and protect corporate information while reducing storage costs and simplifying management.

Launched in December 1999, Enterprise Vault continues to evolve, expand, and mature as a result of Symantec’s consistent investment in development and technology, says Danny Milrad, senior manager, Enterprise Vault product marketing.

The Radicati Group, in its E-Mail Archiving Vendors-2007 Market Quadrant, dated July 2007, reports that Symantec offers one of the most comprehensive portfolios of archiving and compliance solutions to solve the needs of companies in any industry.

After eight years on the market, Symantec highlights five key differentiators that set Enterprise Vault ahead of its competitors.

First, the company offers best-in-class support for Microsoft products. Symantec was first to market with archive support for Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange 2007, Microsoft Windows Desktop Search (WDS), Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS), and Microsoft Office Communication Server.

“We archive more Exchange mailboxes worldwide than our closest four competitors combined,” says Milrad, noting that enterprise Microsoft customers look to Symantec to help optimize their technology investments.

One way Symantec achieves this objective is by offering end-user transparency. “Users don’t have to change the way they work to use our e-mail archiving, there’s no learning curve,” he adds.

A second important differentiator is Symantec’s proven customer success and commitment. The vendor has a full-featured service organization and regional technical product managers who work hand-in-hand with customers, providing an important direct link with customers.

Cost of ownership is essential to the success of any solution. Although not the least expensive e-mail archiving solution on the market, Enterprise Vault provides a good return on investment (ROI) for customers, another significant product differentiator.

By optimizing how e-mail is managed, retained, and stored, Enterprise Vault reduces storage costs and improves system performance. A closer look at Symantec’s Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator exemplifies how users get cost of ownership benefits.

The costs of e-discovery are driving investment in archiving technology. Legal review fees, the biggest expense in e-discovery, range from $200 to $300 per hour, on average. Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator extends the basic search functionality of Enterprise Vault with the collection, preservation, search, and production of e-mail and other electronic records. “By enabling counsel with access to the archive they can identify, collect and preserve relevant data to reduce the costs associated with finding e-mails but also the cost of legal review fees,” says Sean Regan, product marketing manager, Discovery Accelerator.

Further distinguishing its industry leadership, Symantec is the only archiving vendor that can move archived data directly to complimentary downstream E-Discovery solutions while maintaining electronic chain-of-custody reporting to validate the data collection, search and review process.

“Automating what was previously a manual IT process reduces the risk and cost facing the IT departments while improving the chain of custody tracking for corporate counsel and outside counsel," says Regan.

Intelligent archiving, another benefit of Enterprise Vault, allows organizations to make intelligent decisions about which e-mail to keep and for how long. Intelligent archiving enables users to classify and archive e-mails based on content and value, another cost-saving feature.

A company with a good understanding of security, Symantec offers customers a secure foundation for archiving their critical messaging systems while also leveraging data beyond the archive, another vital differentiator when shopping for an e-mail archiving solution.

With Enterprise Vault, Symantec delivers automated classification and open integration with other enterprise content management solutions, including EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle, and Computer Associates, for example. “The bottom line is that we don’t want our customers to be locked into a proprietary archiving, E-Discovery or storage strategy, our open approach supports our customer’s vision.” says Regan.

Finally, with Enterprise Vault, Symantec delivers a scalable architecture capable of addressing the e-mail archiving needs of some of the largest companies in the world. For companies of any size, scalability means investment protection as e-mail communication not only continues to grow but also becomes a potential legal liability if left unchecked.