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[britechguy]

@callthatgirl: If I have to explain it, there's no point.

Hoarding of any sort is not an effective information management strategy. And if we can't agree on that, then we can't.

This isn't about whether something's possible, but whether it's a reasonable information management technique. Keeping junk (which is what keeping everything means) is just not an effective use of time or space (literal and figurative).

 

[britechguy]

4. It’s never actually accessed so it is really not needed. So it’s virtual e-waste. See #1

This is my primary objection. When you have tons of junk, and there are only so many ways you can search it, things that are important can easily be lost while things that are unimportant muddy the mix.

I have no idea why this needs to be explained, really. It's no different than the kinds of filtering we all did for paper. You just don't keep things you have no reason to believe you'll ever need to deal with again. It makes zero sense, in any way.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

//looks at his own mailbox size. Hovering near 40 gigs. Ah well, I use 365..which is a biz class email system, it's meant to store capacity.
I'm not using some residential "10 gig max mailbox" system.

Some business types work heavily in email....I work with quite a few of them. Their email is their primary business tool, file storage, CRM, and all that stuff. With good biz grade email systems, yes you can use it that way. If you're on @snet.net or @aol or whatever el-cheapo IMAP solution your budget website vendor gives you for free...sure...not good! There's no practical way to comb through and extract individual emails and stick them in some other format (that would just take time, have cost, and require other computer resources to store). Think about it..either store it HERE (in my 365 mailbox), or store it THERE...(like in OneDrive)...either way, you're using computer resources and expense. The term "virtual e-waste"...meh...not a thing with me. Storage is dirt cheap. Compared to other types of data a business stores (files, documents, databases like SQL)...email really is miniscule in comparison of storage and expense. I see so many people get wound up about it..yet...look at all the rest of the data a business has...really, the email is miniscule in comparison.

Searching still works fine. I don't run on some way underpowered ancient computer that might take 30 seconds to search my email, mine runs fine no matter how far back I'm looking.

Security risks? MFA accounts, there's the majority of it. Have some compliance rules to keep certain types of data marked and on a deletion schedule? 365 has those data lifecycle management tools to automate that too!

Bumping 30 years doing this gig for small business clients, the huge majority of it with Exchange/Outlook...and right now around 300 separate business clients we manage, we just don't see problems with "email power users". And we have a lot of clients >50 gig mailboxes!

Circling back to the OP's point of "about 1.5TB of PSTs"...I read that is not a single 1.5TB PST...but a bunch of PSTs which amount to about 1.5TB total. So to me that's separate PSTs. Company size of around 25..that makes sense...some are still around for archiving. I'd probably upload those to shared mailboxes for archiving.

 

[callthatgirl]

Email hoarding is a personal decision and I get paid to manage the hoarding, happily.

 

[alexsmith2709]

Circling back to the OP's point of "about 1.5TB of PSTs"...I read that is not a single 1.5TB PST...but a bunch of PSTs which amount to about 1.5TB total. So to me that's separate PSTs. Company size of around 25..that makes sense...some are still around for archiving. I'd probably upload those to shared mailboxes for archiving.

Yes, it should be multiple PSTs, but how many im not yet sure. Shared accounts and upload the PST sound like a good option for these and then onedrive any personal files and sharepoint any shared files and hopefully there isnt much left after that, but if there is i guess either another basic license just to use onedrive if only one person (most like the business owner) or some extra storage space for sharepoint.

 

[HCHTech]

There is a good argument for not keeping email (or any company data) any longer than you are legally required to. If you keep that old data it can be accessed / acquired on discovery if someone sues you. If you deleted it after it was no longer required, it cannot be accessed / acquired on discovery.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

There is a good argument for not keeping email (or any company data) any longer than you are legally required to. If you keep that old data it can be accessed / acquired on discovery if someone sues you. If you deleted it after it was no longer required, it cannot be accessed / acquired on discovery.

Which is a great point to make....because if you fall under these regulations (such as HIPAA)...you want to have an email system that 100% automates all of this for you.

Labeling
Enforce automatic archiving
Enforce deletion after X years

 

[HCHTech]

you want to have an email system that 100% automates all of this for you.

I'd argue you want to automate it in any event, I sure as hell don't want to be the one that gets blamed for NOT deleting something just because you couldn't be 100% on top of this all of the time. You'd schedule the cleanup for once every 3 months or 6 months or whatever, and that means there would always be some data there that really shouldn't be.

I spent many years of my early career working in a very paper-intensive industry. Some employers cared about this and some did not, but even those that did only did cleanup once-per year. It's not a new problem, but the ability to automate it is and that's the real game-changer, IMO.