The IT director must get involved with top business
management to establish company policies and put in place
technology that will manage e-mail, a report from analyst firm
Butler Group has advised.
It warned that although the corporate e-mail system was now
regarded as a business-critical application, since it was an
integral part of other applications, it was often not treated in
the same way as other business-critical systems.
"In our opinion, e-mail management is a mix of business strategy
supported by technology," the report's author, Sue Clarke, senior
research analyst at Butler Group warned.
She said a business may not be able to function if the e-mail
system fails when it is integrated in business processes, or the
e-mail client is used as the user interface of another application,
or as a to-do list.
The report found that while organisations recognised the fact that
compliance and lawsuits required the retention of e-mails, few
companies realised that it also necessitates the ability to
retrieve them.