Oil and Gas

Dear All

Does anyone have a list of strategies to reduce Microsoft Exchange storage costs? I am interested in exploring approaches that can be undertaken at an administration level for example setting up rules to purge all system generated notification emails after 90 days.

Thanks in advance.

Andy Lavender

Hi Andy,

interesting point - especially since many organisations still have a "serious e-mail addiction" I would say.

My idea would be to try and prevent e-mail from being sent in the first place. Smaller and larger companies (like Atos) have either drastically cut back on e-mail or are at least creating a lot more awareness and guidance for *when* to use e-mail. See the following BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150324-the-companies-that-banned-email 

On a much smaller scale, I know of some teams which don't use e-mail at all within their team to collaborate or communicate. Their use for example SharePoint with a shared calendar, shared tasks, a document library and discussion forums. It takes some dedication and discipline, but general feedback from them is that it is a) more productive b) less stressful but c) it only works when people buy in (so other teams you interact with may want to continue use e-mail)

So not a direct answer to your question, but perhaps an interesting extra avenue to explore.

Best regards,

Dennie

Hi Andy,

I have worked at sites where collaboration tools such as Jive and Yammer are deployed. Whilst their deployment was not to directly address the Outlook usage it certainly contributed to the reduction in it's usage.

Most ECM products have their equivalent discussion forum type modules. I share the same view as Dennie in that user adoption is a key requirement that needs to be overcome to help with the success of the usage of such collaboration platforms whether its' to replace Outlook or simply be the recognised tool for a targeted user community for a project.

Kind regards

Thanks for your input Tita.

Agreed internal social platforms such as Yammer will certainly contribute to a reduction in email but I think in a lot of organisations the pace of adoption is not fast enough. As a result I am looking at options to enforce as much automated governance as possible to drive down storage costs.