"Using the native message tracking [in Exchange], I could see where some of the e-mail was going, but I wasn't able to isolate where it was coming from," says Bueffel. "We needed a more general reporting tool."

Henry Yiin, manager of systems engineering at IXIS Capital Markets North America Inc. in New York, relies on Network Physics Inc.'s NP-2000 appliance to monitor traffic volume across the network and to and from the Exchange server. That has helped him pinpoint the source of problems -- whether it's the network, Exchange or some other application -- fairly rapidly.

But monitoring e-mail storage has been more of a challenge. Yiin is using a homegrown Perl script to check storage levels on the Exchange server and associated SAN devices every 10 minutes. The Exchange server can, however, suddenly outstrip its available disk space and crash. "If storage gets to 99% capacity, the residing data stores shut down. That can happen in just a couple of minutes," Yiin says.

Since having the Perl script run more frequently would consume too much CPU time, Yiin is looking for a commercial e-mail monitoring and reporting tool to replace it. "We want both real-time monitoring of the SAN status and good reporting," he says.

Sara Radicati, CEO of The Radicati Group, says she believes the market is ripe for better tools to configure, monitor and plan e-mail systems. "That whole area has a lot of growth potential ahead," she says. "People need a lot of intelligence on performance, capacity planning, pinpointing potential problems before they occur."