Symantec Vaults into enterprise storage

Symantec has launched Enterprise Vault 7.0, which the company claims will enable IT managers to prioritise how they store messages.

As well as handling email storage, IT managers can use the product to archive business-critical instant messages, Symantec claims.

"We had a long hard look at what's happening in the market," said Fredrik Sjostedt, European senior manager for product marketing at Symantec. "Email is a mission-critical function, but we needed a wider look to include instant messaging (IM) and Microsoft Sharepoint, as people are using the web as a group interaction tool."

"We looked at how mail servers performed, and a lot of them are bogged down with unnecessary stuff. Spam takes up 60 to 90 percent of the server, but even in real email a lot of the information is not mission critical," said Sjostedt.

Symantec claims Enterprise Vault 7.0 allows for automatic content classification. Messages are scanned against 50 pre-defined dictionaries for keywords, and also archived with tags to help users recover them in the future.

Both incoming and outgoing instant messages can be monitored and vetted according to policy.

Enterprise Vault 7.0 can be integrated into Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, as well as numerous other Microsoft products including Sharepoint, Windows Live and Windows Live Desktop. The next stage will be to integrate the product into Microsoft Rights Management Server.