For many years customers running POSTINI (which later got migrated to Google Vault) had the luxury of having free leaver licenses for those employees who had left the organisation. This free license allowed the business to retain the email data of the ex-employees. Organisations with lengthy POSTINI contracts were later provided Vault Former Employee (VFE) licenses, also for free.
Archive User licenses
Now that those contracts are coming to an end, Google are moving organisations from VFE to Archive User (AU) licenses, however AU licenses are not free ($4 - Business Plus, $7 - Enterprise Plus, per user per month.)
So many organisations are now looking at this data and having conversations around retention rules for ex-employees. As previously discussed migrating emails does not seem to be an option favoured by many. After all, emails are private and personal by design, they should not be migrated to another employee with “insider knowledge” who would browse through 1000’s of emails to find a crumb or two of juicy information.
An alternative approach is to move email data from Google Vault/GMail to cloud storage or a database, using solutions such as Got Your Back as
Do we need ex-employee email communications?
Why do organisations want to retain ex-employee email communications? Many organisations will need to retain historical data for legislation reason, and if this is the case the Google Archive User license is perfect for them. Data is retained in it’s original format unmodified, with strong audit controls in place.
Backing Up Google Workspace
Backing up Google Workspace is becoming more and more important as
So, what are your thoughts?
It’s becoming a complex landscape for organisations with so many options and areas to consider.
- What are you doing with ex-employee email communication?
- Are you backing up your Google Workspace accounts?
- Do you need access to historical email communications and if so why?
- What are your thoughts on the rights of the individual?
- Do you have any recommendations or suggestions?