AI in Email Archiving: Why We're Taking a Different Path

By Nils Artishdad, Managing Director at ARTEC IT Solutions

The technology industry loves its gold rushes. Every few years, something new captures everyone's imagination, and suddenly every vendor is scrambling to slap the latest buzzword on their products. After three decades in this business, we've learned to take a different approach.

When mobile apps became mandatory for every enterprise product, we didn't just shrink our interface to fit a phone screen. We thought hard about why someone would actually need to access their corporate email archive on a mobile device, and what security that would require. The result was a thoughtful solution, not a hasty adaptation.

What's now called blockchain is something we've been doing since 2005 with our digital signatures for archived documents. Cryptographic signature chains with digital timestamps to protect archives from tampering. We never needed a fancy name for it. A bridge isn't called a "Cross-Water Transportation Enablement Platform," and we simply call our digital signatures what they are.

When everyone rushed to the cloud, we held back and gathered experience with ARTEC Trusted Cloud as our hosting solution to get it right with EMA Cloud, following our philosophy: "If we're going cloud, we're doing it right—and secure." EMA Cloud runs globally on leading hyperscaler platforms with multiple redundancy, providing each customer with a fully isolated archive using true zero-knowledge encryption. With EMA Cloud, we as the service provider have no access or visibility into your archived data, and unlike the usual practice, neither do the hyperscaler platform operators. This is how we define enterprise-grade security: thoughtful architecture, complete implementation, zero compromises.

Half-baked implementations with fancy names? That's for others. We understand problems first, then solve them at their core. This is how we've always operated. Let others rush to market with half-baked implementations. We think it through and then build something that actually solves the problem. Now with AI, I'm watching the same thing play out again. The same rush to implement, the same vendor lock-in dressed up in new clothes, the same fundamental mistakes.

The AI Trap

Today, software vendors across our industry are making the same mistake. They're selecting an AI provider, embedding it directly into their products, and forcing their customers to accept whatever terms, pricing, and limitations come with that choice. Your sensitive data flows through their chosen model, processed by their selected provider, under conditions you had no say in determining.

This should sound familiar because we've been here before. It's the same vendor lock-in strategy that has frustrated enterprise customers for decades, just wearing a new costume. The technology changes, but the fundamental problem remains unchanged.

Consider what happens when your vendor's chosen AI provider triples their prices. Look at Cursor: when their underlying AI provider raised prices, users faced a stark choice: accept the service degradation, pay up, or rebuild their entire workflow. And that's a relatively mild example since you can switch development environments with manageable effort. With an archiving solution containing years or decades of your business data, the stakes are much higher. Good luck with that migration.

What recourse do you have when new regulations make their data processing methods non-compliant in your jurisdiction? What happens when the AI model they selected becomes obsolete, or when you need capabilities that their provider simply doesn't offer? What if you've invested in developing your own specialized AI models tailored to your industry's unique requirements?

The answer, unfortunately, is that you're trapped. You must either accept the limitations or undertake the costly and disruptive process of switching to an entirely different archiving solution. This is precisely the scenario we've spent three decades helping our customers avoid.

A Different Approach

I believe there's a better way. Rather than dictating which AI tools you must use, we're building a framework for our upcoming AOS 7.0 release that puts control back where it belongs: in your hands.

You define custom actions that trigger when users perform searches. The results get sent to your AI tools of choice and return enriched. The decision is always yours: which providers, which data, where processing happens, how integration works, and so on. You control the system prompts, the model parameters, the access rights.

We see this as the only sensible and viable path for processing your data with tools of your choice, under your control, in compliance with privacy and legal requirements.

How It Actually Works

Our Universal Actions Framework contains what's emerging as the Model Context Protocol standard. Think of it as a universal translator between your archive and any AI service.

When a user performs a search or triggers an action in EMA, our framework calls out to your chosen AI endpoints. They can then access your archive's data through our comprehensive API suite; the same APIs we've been refining for years. Need to search documents? That's our search API. Want to analyze attributes? The attribute API is there. Extracting specific documents for processing? Our download API handles that securely.

These aren't proprietary connections that lock you into specific providers. They're standard REST calls that work with any service that can receive and respond to web requests. Your AI service processes the data according to your specifications and returns enhanced results that EMA seamlessly integrates into the user interface. The beauty is in what we don't do. We don't intermediate these connections. We don't force your data through our servers. We don't require specific AI providers or models. EMA talks directly to your chosen AI services, using the same secure API infrastructure you already trust for your other integrations. Many of our customers have relied on this infrastructure for years.

Want to use an on-prem AI model for sensitive data? Configure EMA to point to your internal servers. Prefer a cloud-based service for general inquiries? That's a simple configuration change. Need different AI models for different departments or use cases? The framework supports multiple concurrent connections.

Real-World Applications

Let me share some concrete examples of what this flexibility means in practice.

One of our financial services clients needed to automatically categorize emails according to their specific regulatory framework. With traditional AI-integrated archiving solutions, they would have been limited to whatever categorization schemes the vendor's chosen AI could provide. Using our framework, they connected a specialized financial services AI model that understood their unique requirements and terminology. When regulations changed six months later with the EU's AI Act, they simply updated their categorization approach without touching their archiving infrastructure. The archiving system kept running seamlessly throughout.

Another customer in the healthcare sector required extraction of specific patient information from archived documents while maintaining strict HIPAA compliance. Rather than trusting a generic cloud AI service with sensitive health data, they integrated their own on-premises AI solution that never allowed protected information to leave their controlled environment. Sensitive patient data never left the building.

A European manufacturer faced a different challenge. They needed AI assistance for their archived data but were concerned about upcoming regulatory changes. Our framework allowed them to start with a cloud-based large language model, but when their legal team identified compliance concerns, they switched to a local language model. Instead of a costly migration, it required only a brief configuration change.

The Regulatory Maze

Governments worldwide are racing to out-regulate each other on AI. The EU's AI Act turns software vendors who embed AI into "AI system providers" with massive compliance obligations. The United States is tackling this with executive orders and agency-specific guidelines. Japan is currently betting on industry self-regulation and that it will all turn out okay. China is regulating the underlying algorithms themselves. And the rest of the world is taking notes, following one approach or another.

With hard-coded AI, you're tied to your vendor's compliance strategy. When they become an AI system provider in the EU, you might be one too. When new U.S. guidelines drop, you live with whatever interpretation your vendor chooses.

We draw a clear line here. ARTEC remains an archiving provider. We give you the tools. How and whether you use them is your call.

This matters especially for international operations. Using our federated search feature, you can already build global enterprise archives that respect national boundaries and regulations. The same applies to AI. Need one approach for Europe, another for the U.S., something different for Asia? When regulations shift, which they inevitably will, simply adapt your AI strategy at the national level and keep moving.

The ARTEC Philosophy

ARTEC IT Solutions is not becoming an AI company. We are and will remain archiving specialists, because that's what we do well. You can count on that. But we also see how AI is transforming and simplifying work with archived data. That's why we're creating the technical prerequisites for you to use AI, but on your terms. You maintain full control over your data, your processes, your compliance. We provide the tools, you decide how to use them. That's our understanding of partnership.

This approach isn't new for us. It's how we've always done business. No vendor lock-in, no hidden costs, no surprises is a promise we've given to every customer choosing EMA for decades. We're among the few remaining providers with true flat-rate pricing. Whether your archive or your company grows, the price stays the same. In a world full of subscription models and usage-based billing, that's practically an exception. With EMA, you can focus on your business without worrying about surprises on your next bill.

Looking Ahead

AI is coming to enterprises, that's beyond question. What we need to asking is: How do we shape this transformation?

The easy path is to make choices for our customers, to select technologies and embed them deeply into our products. But the easy path rarely serves our customers' long-term interests. Instead, we're choosing the path that respects your autonomy, protects your investments, and positions you to adapt to whatever the future brings. Because after 30 years in this business, we've learned that the most powerful technology decisions are the ones our customers make for themselves, not the ones we make for them.

But we know our customers. You've built individual processes over years, developed special requirements, established your own compliance standards. Forcing you into a prefabricated AI solution would be disrespectful—and shortsighted. Because what's state-of-the-art today might be outdated tomorrow.

Our Universal Actions Framework is deliberately a different approach. We respect your expertise, your requirements, and your business future. You decide which AI technology fits your company. You maintain control over your data. You remain capable of action when markets, technologies, or regulations change. Whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whatever comes tomorrow, our framework supports it. And if you've developed your own models, we're happy to help you integrate them.

Thirty years of experience have taught us one thing: the best technology decisions are the ones you make yourself. Our job is to give you the necessary tools to do so. No more, but no less. With EMA's Universal Actions Framework, you're not betting on our AI strategy. You're implementing your own instead. That's the ARTEC difference. That's how we've built lasting partnerships for three decades. And that's how we'll continue serving our customers for decades to come.