ArcMail for Instant Messaging, New Archiving Appliance

Instant messaging (IM) solutions bring the benefits of rapid-fire communications, increased productivity and ease of collaboration, but they can also deliver harmful business setbacks if proper measures are not put in place to safeguard and easily retrieve the critical corporate data that they generate over time.

As a provider of archiving solutions that address multiple business issues, ArcMail Technology, Inc. is focused on delivering compliance, data discovery and liability protection to the thousands of organizations that rely upon instant messaging. The company announced ArcMail for Instant Messaging, an IM archiving appliance that works with all popular IM platforms including Yahoo!, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and MSN.

"Instant messaging is clearly valued by businesses of all sizes today," said Rory Welch, CEO of ArcMail. "But the proliferation of this communication medium also comes with an increased need to properly address regulatory compliance, e-discovery and liability protection issues. Not having access to this sensitive data over time can be potentially damaging or costly, yet many organizations today have failed to deploy effective archiving and retrieval solutions."

ArcMail for Instant Messaging is specifically designed to encode, index and archive all instant messaging conversations. Archived conversations can be searched, located and retrieved in seconds. The solution works in conjunction with Defender, ArcMail’s email archiving appliance, to securely store all incoming and outgoing instant messaging and email data – including all associated links, files and attachments – in a centralized location. Access to that data is then available via a single interface, making data discovery simple and efficient for busy IT administrators, chief legal officers and other users.

"Archiving instant messaging conversations is absolutely vital for any organization given the large proportion of content that flows through IM systems, and the legal and regulatory requirements to preserve business records in these communications," said Michael Osterman, principal at Osterman Research. "Organizations of any size and in any industry should archive their IM conversations just as they should email and other content."

Welch adds: "We’re pleased to build upon our industry leadership by addressing the data protection demands of the industry’s most popular communication platforms. Since many instant messaging solutions do not offer their own long-term archiving capabilities, businesses that make use of these platforms are in vital need of a way to secure their valuable data and communications, while also ensuring that critical compliance requirements are being met."

Backed by ArcMail’s advanced hardware archiving technology, the appliance is also designed to ensure that all internal communication stays internal – behind the corporate firewall, and safe from corruption by outside sources.

Step in ArcMail’s Universal Archiving Strategy
ArcMail for Instant Messaging represents another step in ArcMail’s strategy to provide a universal archiving solution, with offerings that span multiple document types including email, instant messaging, private social networking conversations and other data. The product follows the company’s recent launch of an archiving appliance for Salesforce.com Chatter, the real-time enterprise collaboration platform, as well as ArcMail Guardian, an email archiving solution for Google Apps email. Guardian integrates with ArcMail Defender to provide a single, centralized approach to email archiving, covering Google Apps email, Microsoft Exchange and other email platforms.

Priced starting at $9,979, ArcMail for Instant Messaging comes bundled with an ArcMail Defender email archiving appliance and is available for order through ArcMail resellers across North America.