Moving Exchange Email To SQL

We have a business requirement for arching emails (5+ years) which are
generated in an e-commerce application. The quantity is substantial and
some of the emails will have MS Word attachments. As stands today, our
Exchange 5.5 environment is already taxed and archiving options are limited.
Someone suggested that there is a way to offload the emails into a SQL
database. If we could do this, this would provide much more latitude.

Generally speaking, is this difficult?

Thanks,
Bill