New Osterman Research White Paper Outlines ‘Important Considerations When Migrating Archives to the Cloud’

Findings focus on the differences between user archive data and critical compliance data

15th July 2016 – Clevedon, UK – Commissioned by leading archive migration vendor, Transvault, Osterman Research’s latest work takes in a wide range of considerations as to why and how an organization might consider migrating legacy email archives to Cloud systems such as Microsoft Office 365. Technical, commercial and legal stakeholders should all have a say in how this vital business data is handled, and the new white paper seeks to synthesize a number of different viewpoints on these, sometimes, challenging migration projects.

One key area that the paper focuses on, is the difference between email data archived directly from an individual user’s mailbox, perhaps for storage reasons, and data that is archived straight from Microsoft Exchange which underpins company email retention policies and regulatory compliance. This latter form of archiving, often called Journaling, seeks to make an immutable record of all email traffic sent to, sent from or sent within the company’s domain, therefore safeguarding the company from negative legal repercussions and ensuring regulatory compliance. When migrating an entire email system to the Cloud, including all archived data, it is this journal of historic email records that many in the organization, particularly legal and eDiscovery teams, will need to focus on.

“Having completed recent research into the need for universal compliance across varying email archiving platforms, I am delighted to release this new white paper on the subject”, commented Michael Osterman, Principal Analyst of Osterman Research, Inc. “Supported by vendors like Transvault, if companies now have a route they can take to get their various journal data from A to B in a proven and audited fashion, then they are better equipped to unlock the full benefits that cloud archiving and eDiscovery have to offer”, he concluded.

Osterman Research and Transvault (booth 428) are both on site at Microsoft WPC in Toronto, Canada, from July 11 through July 13 and have experts on hand to discuss the relative merits of Cloud-based email archiving and just how a migration project should be planned and undertaken.

“Journals are often the most important aspect of a migration, as they’re the company’s immutable record of all email traffic”, commented Steve Dagless, Transvault’s Director of Product Management. “We’ve already undertaken some high-profile projects to convert third-party journals into the right format for Microsoft’s cloud. What’s the point in migrating your email service to Office 365 if you can’t take absolutely everything you need with you and are forced to maintain and pay for superfluous systems?”, concluded Dagless.

Download “Important Considerations When Migrating Archives to the Cloud”.