This IDC study discusses competitive developments and vendor performance in the email archiving applications market in 2008 and provides the forecast for 2009-2013.

According to Laura DuBois, research director at IDC, "Users of archiving solutions with broader information management aims continue to demand archiving of content beyond email into a consolidated archive repository. The content types include unstructured file system content and objects within SharePoint repositories. There has also been some early interest in archiving of Web 2.0 content such as content from blogs and wikis."

Vivian Tero, program manager for GRC Infrastructure, also notes, "Archiving and eDiscovery solutions will be the bright spots in an otherwise sluggish technology market in 2009 and 2010. Corporations are responding to the macroeconomic constraints by shifting their costs from capex to opex budgets. The SaaS value proposition such as zero infrastructure; rapid time to deployment; and per-per-use delivery and provisioning of retention, search, and legal hold functions present an attractive option for many corporations."