Oracle Adds Email Archiving

Enterprise software supplier Oracle has officially entered the email archiving market with a new product that builds on unstructured data management features in the vendor's database.

Oracle Universal Online Archive and an accompanying software package, Oracle E-mail Archive Service, enable IT managers to organize, archive, and search email from Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, and SMTP-based email systems.

Both products are based on (and require) Oracle 11g, the vendor's structured enterprise database, and require Oracle Fusion Middleware on top of that. But they offer distinct functions (even though there is a bit of overlap):

With this product, Oracle will compete against IBM and EMC in content management, as well as against Symantec, Mimosa, EMC, and others in email archiving. According to Michelle Huff, director of product management at Oracle, a key differentiator is the ability to integrate archiving with the enterprise database. Oracle also allows data to be stored in multiple places but managed centrally.

"There is an adapter for linking to our Universal Records Management system for unstructured data. The value is that the system is federated, allowing you to store data in Sharepoint, file systems, or email, while providing centralized management," she points out.There are a few downsides: The new Oracle Universal Archive and E-Mail Archive Service aren't available, and they aren't in beta either -- at least not officially. "We have a number of proof-of-concept projects underway," Huff says. Oracle won't give a specific time frame for release of the products, saying only that they'll ship this year.

The wares are also expensive. Universal Online Archive will cost $75,000 per CPU. E-Mail Archive Service costs $40,000 per CPU. Add to that the cost of the 11g database, which starts at about $4,995 per CPU; Fusion Middleware, which is priced at $30,000 per CPU for the Enterprise Edition; and Universal Records Management, priced at $100,000 per CPU. (All software runs under Windows, Solaris, Linux, and other mainstream operations systems.)

There may be other, hidden costs: As specific features and functions are required, separate Oracle prerequisites may surface with similarly high price tags.

Oracle's position on its email archiving and management products is similar to that taken on other content management solutions: It may cost a lot, but ROI is dramatic. In a recent report from Forrester Research commissioned by Oracle, for instance, the vendor claims that the city of Ottawa will see a four-year ROI of at least 143 percent on a $13 million investment in Oracle content management software. Forrester calculates a payback within 24 months, with savings of at least $18 million in four years.

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