Easing the e-mail archiving dilemma

Miami Country Day School is using a solution from Live Office to meet its e-discovery and e-mail archiving needs. The school, which includes grades kindergarten through 12, deployed LiveOffice’s Mail Archive to comply with new state and federal legislative and e-discovery preparedness rules, especially regarding management of e-mail communications.

"When it came to archiving, we knew we had to be proactive and take a leadership role," says Donna Lenaghan, director of technology for Miami Country Day School. "We had a problem to solve, and LiveOffice provided the most comprehensive solution."

Dennis Cote, the school’s IT service manager, says, "Mail Archive eliminates a lot of questions … because we know that e-mails can’t be modified. It’s a matter of convenience. We can tag e-mails for legal reasons, and it gives us a real chain of custody, which we never had before. It’s a lot of work to prepare for a legal case—going through machines individually, searching archives, etc. We can avoid these time-consuming headaches with the Mail Archive service because it’s so much easier to search for and tag specific e-mails."

The school could have chosen an on-premise e-mail archiving solution, but instead selected Live Office’s software as a service offering because, among other reasons, it freed the school’s IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. Another reason is security, according to a press release from LiveOffice. Teachers and other staff use e-mail every day, and students receive e-mail accounts beginning in the sixth grade, bringing the total number of users to about 1,000. "We are responsible for providing the best and safest network for our students and their families," says Lenaghan. "Security is essential."

The solution also serves a disaster recovery and e-mail continuity solution, LiveOffice adds.