• E-Mail archiving solution
• Availability of database and mail systems
• Revision-proof archiving solution

Results

1. Introduction of an audit-proof solution for E-Mail archiving
2. Integration with the existing Lotus Domino mail system
3. More comfort for users
4. Users gained the ability to search for and restore E-Mail messages on their own
5. Load on the mail server infrastructure was lowered Installation process completed in just four hours

Description

The company operates a heterogeneous IT infrastructure, which is based on both Windows and Linux, and has to support a wide variety of applications. Particularly high demands are placed on the availability of database and mail systems. Jenoptik operates around 50 physical and about 100 virtual servers in total. Lotus Domino handles all E-Mail communication. No continuous E-Mail archiving solution was implemented until 2009.

E-Mail communication was merely backed up as part of a regular data backup, which consisted of daily incremental backups, complement- ed by a complete backup performed every weekend. Only end-of-year backups were stored for ten years in order to comply with legally mandated retention periods, and to have access to E-Mail messages that were previously deleted locally. »Basically, what we previously lacked was a revision-proof archiving solution. Furthermore, normal backups made it very incommodious and difficult to find and restore older E-Mail messages. Users were unable to do this on their own at their workplace, which made it very tedious to deal with older E-Mail mes- sages. We therefore decided to look at more professional solutions. After studying a couple of alternatives, we decided to go with EMA® from ARTEC IT Solutions in the fall of 2009. The appliance had the best price-performance ratio and also seemed to satisfy all of our functional requirements best.« Volkmar Keller, IT Manager at Jenoptik AG With support from the company‘s IT depart- ment and ARTEC‘s partner QKomm GmbH, EMA® was implemented at Jenoptik and connected to the existing Lotus mail system within a very short amount of time. The solution, which ARTEC IT Solutions offers as a pre-confi gured appliance, required no changes to the existing IT infrastructure. The complete installation process was therefore completed within four hours.

The system has been archiving all of Jenoptik‘s incoming, outgoing, and inter- nally transmitted E-Mail messages since it was fi rst commissioned. An auditproof system was an important criterion in order to meet legal requirements related to E-Mail archiving. EMA® contains a number of innovative technical features that make the system audit-proof. EMA® will, for instance, only store E-Mail messages in their original format, and does not introduce any sort of conversion into foreign formats, such as PDF. Furthermore, E-Mail messages are wholly archived without resorting to any sort of splitting. All components, includ- ing any existing fi le attachments, are left untouched. Furthermore, a unique digital signature, which includes a digital date and time stamp, is automatically assigned to every E-Mail message. Digital signatures verify that messages were not modifi ed or tampered with after archiving.