Symantec unveils Vault for enterprise storage

As well as handling e-mail storage, IT managers can use the product to archive business-critical instant messages, the company said.

"We had a long, hard look at what's happening in the market," said Fredrik Sjostedt, European senior manager for product marketing at Symantec. "E-mail is a mission-critical function, but we needed a wider look to include instant messaging and Microsoft Sharepoint, as people are using the Web as a group interaction tool," he said.

"We looked at how mail servers performed, and a lot of them are bogged down with unnecessary stuff. Spam takes up 60 percent to 90 percent of the server, but even in real e-mail, a lot of the information is not mission-critical," said Sjostedt.

Symantec says Enterprise Vault 7.0 allows for automatic content classification. Messages are scanned against 50 predefined dictionaries for keywords, and also archived with tags to help users recover them in the future.

Both incoming and outgoing instant messages can be monitored and vetted according to policy. Enterprise Vault 7.0 can be integrated into Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, as well as numerous other Microsoft products including Sharepoint, Windows Live and Windows Live Desktop. The next stage will be to integrate the product into Microsoft.