5 ms·

All the while, I just got my office mail downsized from 3 gigs to 1 gig and had to scrap a years worth of my mail history. Why do companies (at least the small

by marcusf 14y ago

All the while, I just got my office mail downsized from 3 gigs to 1 gig and had to scrap a years worth of my mail history. Why do companies (at least the small to mid-sized ones) even bother with in-house exchange servers and the hassle that comes with it any more? * * I know the size comparison is apples to pears since Google Apps is still priced by size, but still. This is stuff that really should be outsourced.

sp332 14y ago
Your email client should be able to download your old emails and store them locally in a searchable folder, right? So even if your email provider downsizes you inbox, there's no reason to lose history.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >Your email client should be able to download your old emails and store them locally in a searchable folder, right? In practice, I've never seen a desktop email client that has both decent searching abilities and database stability. Try storing 10 gigs of email in Outlook. Last I knew, PSTs start getting unstable around 2. Thunderbird begins getting dog slow after a few thousand messages (though I'm not sure of the actual size cutoff, there). Another problem is that most enterprise shops have a policy of not backing up workstations. Get a virus? Hard drive dies? Too bad. Here's your factory image, have fun with that. What about that 10 gigabytes of email? 10 Gigabytes? What the hell is wrong with you? That last conversation has happened at more places than I care to remember... In any case, the cost/value proposition for something like GMail is very, very good. They store everything, they back up everything, they make it searchable with a decent interface. Storage is cheap too, compared with the cost of losing multiple gigabytes of email and managing your own. Anybody can set up an email server, but few can administrate it well.
  - tjoff 14y ago
    I assume you stopped using outlook or thunderbird when you began using gmail in 2004? :P ~8000 messages, couple of gigabytes, takes about as long to search as gmail takes to reload the page in thunderbird for me (and I can customize my search endlessly), this on an old machine that I bought in january of 2008 (searched for the order confirmation ;)). gmail is great, for a web service, but you shouldn't rely on google having backups and you should indulge yourself with a native client, keep gmail, or any other service, for web access.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- marcusf 14y ago
  Yeah I keep it around on my drive but suddenly the backup hassle becomes mine. I don't know, I might just be reactionary and negative for the sake of it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nodata 14y ago
Sometimes legal issues, sometimes privacy concerns, sometimes uptime worries.
- marcusf 14y ago
  I find that most of these are overstated though. Uptime, in particular. What's to say your server will have better uptime than Google?
  - nodata 14y ago
    It won't, but everyone will like to think it will. If the internal mail server goes down, you fix it. If Google's goes down you're powerless and waiting.
  - rmc 14y ago
    You have more control over the uptime if you control the server. If gmail goes down, all you can do is twiddle your thumbs.
    - marcusf 14y ago
      I guess, but it seems like the engineering approach would be to figure out how much downtime is tolerable, compare your IT to GMail, and depending on respective downtimes take a look at the cost and feature equations, instead of reacting with fear (which is, to me, basically what the 'twiddle-thumbs' argument boils down to). I know it doesn't work like that in reality, but it should.
      - rmc 14y ago
        It's not fear to react this way, but a desire to be able to fix things. If there is a downtime on your self-hosted platform you can decide how much effort/time/money to spend to fix it, depending on how urgent it is to you. If your email goes down, and you need to access an old email RIGHT NOW, you have numerous options; get in a taxi NOW, go to data centre, remove hard drive, pull of that one file that will save the business. Or hire the best person you can find for a very short term contract. Or if the email isn't important you can wait till the morning or whatever. With Google hosted email, no matter how much money you have available, you cannot get it fixed quicker. Self-hosting means if things go tits up, you can have some say over how quickly it gets fixed.
eblume 14y ago
A lot of companies (or at least several I've worked with) have policies that emails must not be kept for more than one or two months. I gather in-house exchange servers helps to enforce that. I was told that this is because such a policy allows the company to respond to subpoena requests by simply saying "our policy is to discard all emails after two months, so we cannot comply with this request."
- primatology 14y ago
  Is that valid if employees keep their own backups, and the subpoenaed emails do still exist?
  - there 14y ago
    Yes. The subpoena is not for every person that may have a copy of the e-mail, ever. It's for a piece of evidence that that specific entity may have.
- sgt 14y ago
  In my experience, most companies have a data retention policy that explicitly states that old emails must be kept for a number of years. A separate storage of email archives is an option, but it must not be difficult to extract an email from the archive - which is why I think keeping it in the original inbox is a better option.
- rmc 14y ago
  Wouldn't that back fire on the company (A) if some other company (B) were to use it to their advantage? e.g. B don't pay an invoice, delay 2 months, then demand proof from A that they sent the invoice? Or a disgruntled employee could claim that they informed management months ago about a problem, and management ignored the problem. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.
  - eblume 14y ago
    Where I've worked, invoicing gets sent to another system that does retain data (I think forever).
mike-cardwell 14y ago
I built a write only email archiving system on top of our in-house Exchange system so my organisation could meet it's email retention and data protection responsibilities. It's a shared mail store where people can create folders, add retention periods to those folders, and share them with other people. Once you drag email into those mail folders, they can't be removed other than by reaching their retention period limit. We purposefully keep their "live" mail quota low to force people to properly archive their email. GMail is fine for basic email use. That's it. You want to do anything remotely interesting, you need to do it in-house.
pasbesoin 14y ago
If it isn't saved, it can't be subpoena-ed.

by marcusf 14y ago

sp332 14y ago

Your email client should be able to download your old emails and store them locally in a searchable folder, right? So even if your email provider downsizes you inbox, there's no reason to lose history.

Karunamon 14y ago
>Your email client should be able to download your old emails and store them locally in a searchable folder, right? In practice, I've never seen a desktop email client that has both decent searching abilities and database stability. Try storing 10 gigs of email in Outlook. Last I knew, PSTs start getting unstable around 2. Thunderbird begins getting dog slow after a few thousand messages (though I'm not sure of the actual size cutoff, there). Another problem is that most enterprise shops have a policy of not backing up workstations. Get a virus? Hard drive dies? Too bad. Here's your factory image, have fun with that. What about that 10 gigabytes of email? 10 Gigabytes? What the hell is wrong with you? That last conversation has happened at more places than I care to remember... In any case, the cost/value proposition for something like GMail is very, very good. They store everything, they back up everything, they make it searchable with a decent interface. Storage is cheap too, compared with the cost of losing multiple gigabytes of email and managing your own. Anybody can set up an email server, but few can administrate it well.
- tjoff 14y ago
  I assume you stopped using outlook or thunderbird when you began using gmail in 2004? :P ~8000 messages, couple of gigabytes, takes about as long to search as gmail takes to reload the page in thunderbird for me (and I can customize my search endlessly), this on an old machine that I bought in january of 2008 (searched for the order confirmation ;)). gmail is great, for a web service, but you shouldn't rely on google having backups and you should indulge yourself with a native client, keep gmail, or any other service, for web access.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
marcusf 14y ago
Yeah I keep it around on my drive but suddenly the backup hassle becomes mine. I don't know, I might just be reactionary and negative for the sake of it.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

nodata 14y ago

Sometimes legal issues, sometimes privacy concerns, sometimes uptime worries.

marcusf 14y ago
I find that most of these are overstated though. Uptime, in particular. What's to say your server will have better uptime than Google?
- nodata 14y ago
  It won't, but everyone will like to think it will. If the internal mail server goes down, you fix it. If Google's goes down you're powerless and waiting.
- rmc 14y ago
  You have more control over the uptime if you control the server. If gmail goes down, all you can do is twiddle your thumbs.
  - marcusf 14y ago
    I guess, but it seems like the engineering approach would be to figure out how much downtime is tolerable, compare your IT to GMail, and depending on respective downtimes take a look at the cost and feature equations, instead of reacting with fear (which is, to me, basically what the 'twiddle-thumbs' argument boils down to). I know it doesn't work like that in reality, but it should.
    - rmc 14y ago
      It's not fear to react this way, but a desire to be able to fix things. If there is a downtime on your self-hosted platform you can decide how much effort/time/money to spend to fix it, depending on how urgent it is to you. If your email goes down, and you need to access an old email RIGHT NOW, you have numerous options; get in a taxi NOW, go to data centre, remove hard drive, pull of that one file that will save the business. Or hire the best person you can find for a very short term contract. Or if the email isn't important you can wait till the morning or whatever. With Google hosted email, no matter how much money you have available, you cannot get it fixed quicker. Self-hosting means if things go tits up, you can have some say over how quickly it gets fixed.

eblume 14y ago

A lot of companies (or at least several I've worked with) have policies that emails must not be kept for more than one or two months. I gather in-house exchange servers helps to enforce that. I was told that this is because such a policy allows the company to respond to subpoena requests by simply saying "our policy is to discard all emails after two months, so we cannot comply with this request."

primatology 14y ago
Is that valid if employees keep their own backups, and the subpoenaed emails do still exist?
- there 14y ago
  Yes. The subpoena is not for every person that may have a copy of the e-mail, ever. It's for a piece of evidence that that specific entity may have.
sgt 14y ago
In my experience, most companies have a data retention policy that explicitly states that old emails must be kept for a number of years. A separate storage of email archives is an option, but it must not be difficult to extract an email from the archive - which is why I think keeping it in the original inbox is a better option.
rmc 14y ago
Wouldn't that back fire on the company (A) if some other company (B) were to use it to their advantage? e.g. B don't pay an invoice, delay 2 months, then demand proof from A that they sent the invoice? Or a disgruntled employee could claim that they informed management months ago about a problem, and management ignored the problem. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.
- eblume 14y ago
  Where I've worked, invoicing gets sent to another system that does retain data (I think forever).

mike-cardwell 14y ago

I built a write only email archiving system on top of our in-house Exchange system so my organisation could meet it's email retention and data protection responsibilities. It's a shared mail store where people can create folders, add retention periods to those folders, and share them with other people. Once you drag email into those mail folders, they can't be removed other than by reaching their retention period limit. We purposefully keep their "live" mail quota low to force people to properly archive their email. GMail is fine for basic email use. That's it. You want to do anything remotely interesting, you need to do it in-house.

pasbesoin 14y ago

If it isn't saved, it can't be subpoena-ed.