Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is updating the data storage features in Exchange 2010 to add new email archiving and eDiscovery capabilities.
According to a Microsoft Exchange Team Blog, Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will arrive later this year. Central to SP1 will be new email archiving and eDiscovery updates based on customer feedback.
The integrated archiving ability of Exchange 2010 announced in November will get new flexibility in SP1, with the ability to provision users’ Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. The added functionality will let organizations implement separate storage strategies or tiered storage for less frequently accessed email.
New server side capabilities will allow historical email data from .PST files to be imported directly into Exchange, and IT pro controls will enable delegate access to a user’s Personal Archive.
To make it easier to set retention policies, SP1 will update the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags for automating the deletion and archiving of email and other Exchange items.
Multi-Mailbox Search, which can be used to conduct eDiscovery of email for legal, regulatory or other reasons, gets a new search preview to help with early case assessment by estimating the number of items in the result set, along with keyword statistics, before email located in the search is copied to the designated discovery mailbox. Microsoft is also adding a search result deduplication option for users to copy only one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. SP1 will also offer support for annotation of reviewed items.
Microsoft is planning to include support for access to a user’s Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.
Microsoft will be offering a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America in June, and the software giant has also published a whitepaper on Exchange archiving.
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