Most law firms run Microsoft Exchange Server as their email server. This in combination with Microsoft Outlook creates a very workable and robust system for handling client communication, contact management and diary management.
However, the problem for IT teams managing Exchange is that the architecture is based on a “store and forward” design – i.e. receive an email and forward it on to the recipient in the fastest possible time. Exchange was never designed to hold large quantities of information for long periods of time. Microsoft’s strategy instead is that a database, particularly SQL Server, should be used for this purpose. Indeed, Microsoft’s decision to deprecate public folders and start removing technologies like as WebDAV from future versions of Exchange support this.
As a result, because Exchange was never designed to hold large quantities of data IT departments struggle when the Exchange stores get big. They are difficult to backup, and almost impossible to validate the backup when they do. Exchange will also demand more and more computing horsepower the bigger the databases get. Moreover there are limits on sizes of the Exchange database and storing very large databases can get very expensive very quickly. Essentially, if you compare the amount of data stored like-for-like between SQL Server and Exchange, SQL Server is easier to manage and substantially cheaper.
IT teams are usually motivated to keep the Exchange stores as small as possible. With a philosophy of the owning organisation moving to one where Exchange is once again used to store emails for as long as it takes to get them to someone it becomes far easier to manage.
The design of Topaz Filer is in-line with this philosophy. The approach is to get the emails out of the Exchange store and into a proper, archival store – specifically a document management system of some description. This allows the IT department to keep mailboxes and hence the store sizes very small (with the incumbent reduction in running costs), and remain secure in the knowledge that all processed emails have been stored safely and securely.
