How 3 businesses tackle email compliance

Regulatory compliance isn’t a one-size-fits-all challenge. A steel manufacturer in Poland, a management consulting firm in Germany, and a public broadcaster in the Czech Republic share almost nothing in common on the surface. But each faces the same fundamental obligation: to prove, at any time, that business communications are retained and searchable to meet the standards set by GDPR, GoBD, and other regulatory compliance mandates.

For each of these organizations, the path forward was the same: email archiving through OpenText™ MailStore, an email archiving solution purpose-built for businesses that need compliance-ready, tamper-proof email storage without excessive IT overhead or increased costs.

Here’s how three businesses used MailStore to put email compliance into practice: 

Compliance at scale: Cognor Holding S.A.

Cognor Holding S.A., headquartered in Poland, operates across the steel manufacturing and metal-scrap trading sector and exports globally. As email volume grew, the IT team recognized that their existing approach left compliance gaps: mailboxes were capped by size limits, emails were buried in PST files and to meet legal data retention requirements under Polish and EU regulations, a more structured approach was needed.

The company selected MailStore Server as its email archiving solution. Configuration took less than an hour, and the system integrated with the company's existing mail environment without complications. With journaling in place, every inbound and outbound email is captured the moment it transits the mail server, then indexed into a fully searchable archive.

"Among [MailStore’s] advantages, I would include the ease of deployment and subsequent administration, as well as integration with various mail server connection scenarios, even unconventional ones like ours. The reasonable price of the license convinced us to purchase the solution."

— Dariusz Nawrocki, Chief IT Administrator, Cognor Holding S.A.

Beyond support for regulatory compliance, MailStore enabled the IT team to retire PST files from the environment and remove mailbox size limits for all 600 licensed users. The email server load dropped, backup processes were simplified, and the business retained the flexibility to migrate to a more powerful email platform without archive migration concerns.

Legally compliant archiving: Horn & Company

Horn & Company, an international management consulting firm based in Germany, uses MailStore Server across all its locations. For Sebastian Danisch, the firm’s IT manager, their requirements were straightforward: fast, reliable search across archived email reduced load on the email server, and email archiving that meets German legal requirements, including GoBD compliance.

For Danisch, the decision required little deliberation. He had deployed MailStore at several organizations before and trusted what the product could do. Setup was fast, IT complexity was low, and the team was up and running quickly.

“MailStore Server offers a wide range of benefits for IT and users alike. IT and the software combine to reduce the workload of the email server and client cache, while our staff are able to search for and find emails and attachments much faster and more selectively.”

— Sebastian Danisch, IT Manager, Horn & Company

For legal and HR teams at the firm, the ability to search and retrieve archived emails without IT involvement is a direct compliance advantage. Staff can easily find communications through MailStore's Outlook add-in or web access, without filing a support ticket. For Horn & Company, it has been that way ever since: reliable, low-maintenance, and a perfect fit for their compliance requirements. 

Legal retention, simplified: Česká televize

Česká televize is a public-service broadcaster in the Czech Republic operating seven channels across news, sports, culture, and entertainment, with more than 2,000 licensed users generating email at scale every day. As email volumes grew, the organization recognized that its existing archiving software could not keep pace. The previous solution, built on a stubbing process, fell short on reliability, user experience, and the ability to scale licensing as the organization's needs changed.

The requirements for a replacement came down to four things:

• Straightforward archiving of large volumes from Microsoft Exchange Server
• Scalable licensing
• Country-specific legal compliance for business data retention
• User experiences that were intuitive enough for the staff to search for and restore their archived emails without IT support

The setup was fast. Existing email inventories were brought into the archive using mailbox archiving, then the system switched to journal archiving to capture all newly sent and received emails in real time, removing the risk of data loss or manipulation. Users and administrators gained immediate access to a fully searchable archive through Outlook, and the load on the Microsoft Exchange Server instance dropped as older emails moved out of active mailboxes.

"By implementing MailStore Server, we were able to meet the challenges posed by email archiving, while the user-friendly search and restore feature allowed us to significantly enhance storage efficiency and user productivity."

— Jakub Houska, System Engineer, Česká televize

Beyond operational gains, the archive supports compliance with Czech legal requirements for the retention of business-relevant data, giving the organization a defensible, tamper-proof record of its communications.

What these stories have in common

Three businesses across different countries and compliance mandates, and the shared thread through each story is that meeting regulatory requirements didn’t require a painful, expensive, or complex IT project.

MailStore archives every email at the point of transmission, stores it in an immutable state, and keeps it fully indexed for fast retrieval. This means that legal and HR teams can easily search archives without IT support. Compliance audits draw on tamper-proof records. IT departments see reduced server load and the elimination of PST-file sprawl. Administrators deploy and configure the system in hours, not weeks.

For businesses operating under GDPR, GoBD, or other regional email compliance requirements, having a searchable, tamper-proof, and audit-ready email archive is what regulators, auditors, and legal teams ask for. The organizations in these stories were ready for that moment because of OpenText MailStore. 

Read more:

Compliance regulations: What your business needs to know

The case for archiving your business communications

Regulatory compliance risks and why email archiving matters

Learn more about OpenText's continuity and compliance products