Try Enkive

Sometime last year, one of our customers asked us to help them implement an open source email archiving and eDiscovery system. We searched but could not find one that will work for them; (and when it comes to finding open source software, we're quite experienced - Open Source Software is almost the only thing that The Linux Box does ). We thought we should build them a system from scratch and contribute it to the open source software community.

Before we embarked on this investment path we asked our other customers, one of whom in particular told us that they spend almost $20M, (yes millions) a year on eDiscovery of email.

When your email, a record of organizational communications, is needed:

• to support a legal case, or
  


• to meet a compliance related search (think FOIA, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, etc), or
  


• when email was accidentally deleted, or
  


• when your customer or prospect or vendor had exchanges with employees who are no longer in your employ, and the emails have been deleted, or
  


• when your email storage capacity explodes, or
  


• when you need to include emails with your case management system,

unless you have an email archiving solution, the only way to get it back is to restore from back up (if you have one).  And it takes a long time.  And it is very disruptive. And its frustrating, particularly when you must retrieve the email very fast, because the judge said so.

The cost of retrieval may be higher for a large company than for a smaller one. Court cases show that the penalties for non-compliance are mounting. Whether hard cost or soft cost, it's expensive.  Our customer with the $20M a year problem, had invested in a large and expensive software just before I called them.

Based on further research, we discovered that the need is high. Less than 40% of businesses have an email archiving solution. But it is changing.

So we built the system. At our cost.  And implemented it for the customer.

It's called Enkive CE (Community Edition). It's geared for use by organizations. For larger organizations we'll have an Enterprise Edition (EE). 

It can run on in-house servers or be hosted in the cloud. It has not been available very long and already has ~6,000 downloads. We offer subscription-based support and professional services with it.

My ask:

Please try it. http://www.enkive.org has documentation, instructions, and the software itself. Give us feedback. Subscribe to the mailing list. Follow us on Twitter @enkive.  Talk to us about it. Tell us if and how it works for you. And spread the word.

If nothing else, admire the logo designed by CurveDetroit :).

Thank you.
elizabeth ziph, CEO
The Linux Box Corporation