Email's popularity has had a profound impact on archiving. But not all email archiving tools are created equal. An archiving tool must interface with your email or database system, yet impose few performance penalties against the applications using the email archive. Your company should have retention rules planned ahead of time, and you should consider the need for index/search capabilities to address e-discovery demands. Since the volume of email is constantly growing, an email archiving tool must scale well. All these factors come into play for anyone purchasing an email archiving tool:

Compatibility with your current software
Email archiving tools should interface closely with your existing email or database system. The issue lies in the number of platforms that are compatible and the level of compatibility for each platform. Smaller organizations with no plans to change their email platform might be better off with a narrowly focused email archiving product; large organizations that use more then one email/database system will benefit from a tool with cross-platform compatibility.