EMC debuts e-mail consolidation

EMC announced on Wednesday e-mail management and storage targeted at midsize companies.

Express Solution for E-Mail is designed to let companies with hundreds to several thousands of e-mail users consolidate and manage years of e-mail messages on a single networked storage system, the storage giant said. The new product can cut the total cost of ownership of Microsoft Exchange Server storage by up to 30 percent, EMC says.

The new product includes Clariion midtier networked storage hardware and Legato EmailXtender Archive Edition software. The archive software is used to expand the size of people's mailboxes while moving and compressing older messages to lower-cost drives, EMC said.

The company plans to demonstrate the tiered storage and e-mail management package at Microsoft's technical centers in late 2004. EMC said the product is available from its partners, including Avnet, Dimension Data, MTI Technology, Pomeroy IT Solutions and Sarcom. Pricing was not announced.

Regulatory requirements such as those under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are forcing companies to store e-mail, along with other types of data.

"Growing businesses managing Microsoft Exchange environments have a unique set of challenges. They face similar management headaches and growth issues as the largest IT departments--but in many cases without a large staff or budget available," David Goulden, EMC's executive vice president of customer operations, said in a statement. "This new solution bridges that gap."

Express Solution for E-Mail is the first in a series of EMC Express Solutions, which include packaged hardware, software and services for information management.