Messaging Architects, in email lifecycle management and compliance, announced that the new release of its M+Guardian enterprise email firewall offers a revolutionary and cost-effective method for filtering and storing email attachments. Version 2008.3 now includes M+SecureStore functionality powered by Caringo's  highly scalable CAStor technology.

M+SecureStore eliminates duplicates of email attachments, resulting in cost savings of up to 50%. Attachments are automatically stripped from incoming email right at the gateway, and stored once in a central storage repository. A link from within the email enables users to have immediate access to attachments.

"Attachments typically account for as much as 85% of total email volume. 45% of those attachments are larger than 10 MB," said Maximilian Morgan, M+Guardian Product Manger, citing a recent Osterman Research study. "Email storage is rapidly becoming the single most important vector in the growth of data retention for organizations worldwide, often representing up to 10% of annual IT spending."

M+Guardian's implementation of attachment stripping, while completely transparent to users, enables administrators to reinforce corporate usage policies by fully automating the handling of attachments based on file size and/or content types. By replacing attachments with the equivalent of a URL, M+Guardian prevents storage duplication as employees forward attachments internally to colleagues or even outside the organization.

Storing attachments in a central repository also enables administrators to maintain independent control over the lifecycle of email attachments, which are now considered legally admissible as official records. Attachments can be rapidly recovered for the purposes of legal discovery, internal audits and information requests even if users have deleted the email from their mailboxes. M+SecureStore features a built-in, automatic off-site data replication function that further enhances disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

"Every additional TB of storage an organization purchases will cost 3 times that amount to manage", said Morgan. "By offering an intelligent way to handle the ever growing flow of email attachments, the M+Guardian SecureStore helps organizations to significantly reduce these costs and manage data more efficiently."

"One of the biggest problems with email is the massive storage requirements of multiple copies of attachments," said Mark Goros, CEO of Caringo. "M+Guardian with Caringo's CAStor provides customers an email solution that dramatically reduces storage requirements for attachments with an affordable, scalable, best-in-class content storage repository. Complexity to archive and store an ever-increasing volume of email and attachments is now a thing of the past."

Availability
M+Guardian 2008.3 is available immediately as a physical appliance or as a virtual server for VMware. It is compatible with all standard email servers, including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Domino and Novell GroupWise.


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