Email Continuity – protecting your business
against email downtime
Email is a critical communications tool. Email downtime means a
loss of productivity, possible compliance and regulatory issues
related to data loss, or even lost revenues. Minimizing email
downtime is an increasingly important part of an organization’s
messaging infrastructure and of its disaster prevention and
recovery strategy.
Email Continuity
GFI Software | www.gfi.com
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Introduction
Email has become deeply ingrained in business operations. Internal communications are often
accomplished more by email than by phone or face-to-face meetings. Communications with external
clients, vendors, partners, and other business contacts are perhaps even more dependent on email. Calls
and meetings are scheduled by email; decisions are made based on email correspondence; inquiries,
proposals, and contracts are sent by email; communications both mundane and critically important are
these days handled by email more than by any other medium.
Businesses have become so accustomed to using email that even a few minutes of server downtime is
enough to have employees and executives quickly calling the helpdesk. While a minute or two of email
server downtime is not catastrophic, no organization can function effectively if downtime increases to
hours or days.
Risk management and business continuity planning exercises should include email uptime as a priority.
Businesses must not confuse email continuity with email archiving or email backups. The latter are
suitable and necessary for disaster recovery but not for providing continued and seamless use of email
when hardware or software errors occur or when a more serious disaster strikes.
Outages and their impact on business
Email downtime and outages are a business reality. At some point in time, something will go wrong and
most businesses are caught unawares. Computer hardware will eventually fail, and occasionally fails prior
to scheduled replacement. Email or o