Why should companies worry about how they store e-mail? They might consider the $10 million fine the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) imposed on Banc of America Securities LLC in 2004 after the

BofA subsidiary failed to produce the records, including e-mails, requested by the SEC, promptly enough to satisfy regulators. Or the $29 million in damages UBS AG was ordered to pay in April for discriminating against an equity saleswoman, in a case that relied partly on executives' e-mails.

Either case demonstrates an irrefutable set of facts: There exists today an unmanageable volume of e-mails in most businesses; some if not many represent important records of the company's business activities; and there is an increasingly likely chance that companies will get in hot water for not having a system for storing, retrieving and eliminating them. Dumping them on magnetic tapes does not constitute effective storage if you can't find a specific message expeditiously, and just deleting them puts the company at risk of violating a slew of new regulations that require maintaining records, including e-mails, for a certain period of time.