C2C has announced the release of PST Enterprise, a software tool that allows organisations to manage the elimination and migration of Microsoft Exchange PST data throughout their entire network.

Many companies wish to eliminate PST files but the complexity of performing what has been a largely manual process can make this a daunting task. PST Enterprise automates the processes of eliminating PSTs by providing consistent policies that can operate across the organisation.

The scalable solution transparently discovers all of an organisation's PST files, both active files in current use as well as dormant ex-employee data, regardless of whether it is on a file server or client workstations and laptops.

It is estimated that an average of three PST files exist for every Exchange email user. This is compounded by the proliferation of PST files from past employees. Yet, most of this critical corporate data falls outside the traditional data protection process creating significant risk of data loss or legal exposure.

PST Enterprise allows organisations to easily and seamlessly discover and report on all PST files and provides the critical information needed to make informed decisions on their elimination or migration into an email archive or to Microsoft Exchange 2010.

PST Enterprise collects critical information on each PST file, before it is ever migrated or ingested, including its location, age, volume of data, size on disk, and number of messages. The process is performed transparently, without any user interaction.

"PST files can be a very difficult problem for organisations looking to assure comprehensive corporate data retention and litigation readiness," said Dave Hunt, CEO of C2C.

"They present an enormous backup, recovery, corruption and discovery challenge which creates a strong desire to eliminate PST files, but often the complexity and resources required are constraining. With PST Enterprise we are helping to eliminate the strain of managing PST data by first discovering where all PST files may be hiding and then giving administrators the details they need to identify the best course of action for that file, including deletion or migration, before it is ever ingested into an email archive."

PST Enterprise supports a range of actions once PST files have been discovered to help email administrators best manage PST data for simplified administration, eDiscovery and overall corporate data protection. PST Enterprise will automatically determine the file owner. This is useful for files from former employees or for PST files that have become disassociated from an active Exchange user.

It will also enable the automatic deletion of data older than a certain age, with the benefit of reducing the overall data capacity requirements prior to a migration project, conforming to company retention policies or eliminating legally risky data rather than retaining it, and migration of data that falls between two dates.

The automation of PST migration offers significant time saving benefits for any organization that is merging two Exchange data stores or upgrading to a newer version of Microsoft Exchange. It will also relocate selected PST files to a server or central location. This enables the simplified movement of PST data into a secure corporate retention process for disaster recovery readiness and compliance.

The C2C PST Enterprise solution operates as a stand-alone product which can be used alongside existing email archive software products, or in combination with the C2C ArchiveOne Enterprise email management, eDiscovery and retention solution.