Although chat services such as Slack are making significant inroads into the enterprise, email remains the go-to communications tool in many situations. Managing the countless messages produced by a large company’s employees on a day-to-day basis requires an extensive set of tools.

One of the most basic necessities is an archiving system for preserving correspondences with long-term importance. Mimecast Ltd., a publicly traded company that has carved out a niche for itself by automating email management, hopes to tick off this box with its latest offering.

The new Mimecast Cloud Archive provides a managed environment for storing emails. Upon ingesting a message, the platform logs all the associated metadata and creates three copies that are spread out over different locations. This arrangement ensures that emails remain accessible if one of the sites suffers an outage.

According to Mimecast, administrators can specify how long data should be retained through a centralized management console. The required duration has the potential to vary greatly depending on the email. A message containing a customer’s financial details, for example, may have to be brought up years after being sent to clear up a legal dispute or comply with an audit. 

Cloud Archive packs a global search function designed to help users quickly retrieve information in such cases. Mimecast said its tool is the fastest of its kind in the industry, a claim it’s backing up with a service-level agreement guaranteeing queries take no longer than seven seconds to execute.

That’s not particularly quick compared with something like a Google search. However, the service-level agreement offers something that’s usually more important in an enterprise context than saving a few seconds here or there: reliability. Companies need to ensure that users can locate data in a reasonable amount of time even when they’re sifting through upwards of millions of internal emails. 

Cloud Archive complements Mimecast’s existing email management tools. The provider offers backup services for recovering messages lost to a ransomware attack or technical failure, as well as security software aimed at protecting workers from threats such as phishing, which involves impersonating a co-worker or acquaintance to get key information.

Image: Mimecast