Unify is a database tools company that acquired archiving software vendor AXS-One in June 2009. On June 22, 2010, Unify announced it would merge with Daegis, an e-discovery review firm: Daegis has a matter review SaaS that culls down a corpus of ESI. It also provides manpower to plan the initial collection process and the... read more »
Recently at the Gartner IT Infrastructure Expo in Orlando, I witnessed a seminal change in IT thinking. Nine out of 10 IT decision makers I spoke with told me that they have active general-purpose file archiving projects. Hitherto, email archiving has been at the fore, with file archiving always on the back burner. The general... read more »
There are many factors to consider when moving email and email archives to the cloud. Three important ones are: Do you presently have on-premise email archiving? If so, then you must consider how to move the email archiving storage to the cloud. The cost of this move can be considerable, in terms of load fees,... read more »
Nice bit of gossip arising from a London court case. It is said that: A British UK property developer was working with a partner (Middle Eastern royalty). They wanted to develop a part of central London. The UK’s Prince of Wales objected to the development, and contacted the partner. There’s a nice email record of... read more »
One of the new capabilities of Exchange 2010 is its expanded mailbox capacity. Microsoft asserts that it is possible to store years of email safely in Exchange 2010 without concern for mailbox size. That may be true, but there is a potential problem with this approach. What happens when you have to upgrade Exchange sometime... read more »
Had an interesting conversation recently with someone close to the EAS/Zantaz/Autonomy on-premises archiving product. In summary: Support for EAS/Zantaz has become very poor since Autonomy acquired the product. It appears Autonomy has little interest in the product. However, an Exchange 2010 version is now available. The development efforts for this are nontrivial, so contrary to... read more »
A lot of Autonomy employees are very unhappy with the company. See these Glassdoor reviews, where employees share their experiences. Among other things, the culture appears to be one in which limited correlations between sales claims and reality are permissible. Caveat: Embittered ex-employees probably form the vast bulk of contributors to sites of this nature,... read more »
The company has now added support for social networks. The main applications are: Stopping employees from disclosing sensitive information Protecting against hidden phishing/Trojan attacks Linking social network presences to the main corporate identity Monitoring, moderating, and controlling posts Controlling access to specific capabilities within a social network Logging of posts and interactions Feeding a corporate... read more »
There is growing interest in the control of the use of social networks, especially Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Vendors are responding with technology solutions. What are the main drivers for this interest? I suggest: Compliance. Financial services is the leading industry. Recent FINRA regulations have specifically identified social networks. Governmental bodies and energy utilities will... read more »
I’ve had a few random conversations about problems at Autonomy recently. For example: See various adverse comments here. Caveats: 1) This Web site is run by Martin Tuip, who works for Iron Mountain/Mimosa, which competes with Autonomy. 2) The comments are spread over 2008 to 2010. A major Zantaz client comments that, for the EAS... read more »
Exchange 2010 SP1 is yet to be released, but information about its new features is beginning to appear. For example, see this recent EHLO Blog. Several improvements are important for archiving and discovery. The biggest change is the move to split the Personal Archive mailbox into its own database. Now you can implement a tiered... read more »
Microsoft recently announced the features of Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1. This is a feature-rich Service Pack that should streamline Exchange 2010 deployments. The most important elements are improvements to Exchange 2010 archiving: Archive emails for a user can be in a different mailbox than the primary mailbox. This improves performance and allows for multitiered... read more »
Human beings have been communicating digitally, in a way that leaves electronic traces, since the advent of email. The traces of such communications can yield a lot of valuable information, in ways that are only just beginning to be understood. Today, we usually sift through electronic archives by doing word searches. But more is possible.... read more »
Astaro, which sells a unified threat management appliance, has just added an email archiving option. The archiving is cloud-based; access is via an Outlook plug-in or Web browser. Cloud-based material is encrypted. Comments: Astaro deserves more visibility. The main services of the appliance are: Network security/firewall Email security–AV, AS Web security–content filtering, anti-malware, Skype, peer... read more »
Mainsoft’s SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes is a useful way to make Notes work with SharePoint. For example, within Notes, you can: Access and publish emails and documents on SharePoint, without having to switch applications. Collaborate on documents using Sametime. Send document links rather than attachments, reducing email storage. Update document fields to comply with... read more »
It’s not every day that a new world-class Exchange blog pops up. We were excited to hear that Microsoft’s Perry Clarke has started a blog, called “Ask Perry.” Perry has been part of the Exchange product group at Microsoft for 13 years. I first met Perry while researching Exchange 2000 beta storage group design decisions... read more »
For many organizations, the move to email as a service seems to be a good one. Email is difficult to manage and it consumes increasing amounts of expensive storage. Why not hand over all your email equipment to a reliable service provider? One reason is the Patriot Act. This recent blog in ITbusinessedge reveals some... read more »
We heard an interesting speculation recently from a chum at a well-known investment bank, that Autonomy is cooking its books. We’d welcome further input. First, a couple of relevant bits of background information: Autonomy’s core business is its Idol enterprise search product. The search market in general has been somewhat stagnant for several years. Autonomy’s... read more »
We’ve argued that most of us will end up storing almost all digital information indefinitely, because: Storage is getting cheaper and faster all the time. The costs of deletion are greater than keeping digital information. A (very) small proportion of old digital information will actually be of some value. It’s surprisingly hard to delete information.... read more »
Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 were all released to manufacturing by Microsoft on April 16. For Outlook users, Office 2010 sports dramatically improved search speed and reliability, support for larger mailboxes, and myriad end-user productivity features. These include quick steps, conversation cleanup, the ability to ignore conversations, and the ability... read more »
Email archiving is a critical data center application. Email archiving is usually located on premise, but hosted archiving is attractive because it reduces up-front server and storage costs and simplifies IT support efforts. A hybrid approach should also be considered. This manages email locally before it moves to the cloud for long-term retention. Email remains... read more »
This is the third of a short series of bulletins on Exchange public folders. We discuss: What they are and how they’re used (first bulletin) The problems of public folders (second bulletin) The migration options and the main issues to consider when migrating (this bulletin) Main Alternatives There are various alternatives to public folders. Microsoft’s... read more »
This is the second of a short series of bulletins on Exchange public folders. We discuss: What they are and how they’re used (last bulletin) The problems of public folders (this bulletin) The migration options and the main issues to consider when migrating (next bulletin) The Problems: User Perspective Users love public folders. They are... read more »
This is the first of a short series of bulletins on Exchange public folders. We discuss: What they are and how they’re used (this bulletin) The problems of public folders (next bulletin) The migration options and the main issues to consider when migrating (third bulletin) What Public Folders Are Public folders have been available since... read more »
Exchange operates with a hidden deleted items folder referred to as the “dumpster.” In Exchange 2007, end users can manually purge email in the dumpster, thereby bypassing an organization’s legal hold. This was a major legal risk. Exchange 2010 introduces a new and substantially improved dumpster that fixes this design flaw, and offers additional benefits.... read more »
Exchange 2010 has substantially increased storage needs: One of the exciting new developments of Exchange 2010 is the introduction of Database Availability Groups (DAGs). DAGs protect Exchange database contents with disk-based database replication. Each Exchange database can have up to 16 replicas, all automatically managed by Exchange. In a typical setup, two to three database... read more »
Google has acquired San Francisco-based Episodic for an undisclosed amount. Just over a year old, Episodic is focused on providing a platform to manage live and on-demand video on the Internet or any Web-enabled device. We think Google will incorporate Episodic into YouTube, further maturing the video delivery and management mechanisms in YouTube to approach... read more »
Microsoft recently unveiled plans around its Communications Server “14″ at VoiceCon. Details were restricted to the next-generation Office Communicator client. Key new features include: Location: ability to auto-detect or populate your location based on WiFi/subnet information, etc. Skill search: ability to find contacts based on a user’s skills, projects, or interests. This information is pulled... read more »
Microsoft appears ready to launch its Turtle and Pure phones at an April 12th event themed “it’s time to share†in San Francisco. Invitations were sent out to press and analysts with a focus on the mobile phone market. We agree with the author of this article on TechSpot that the timing of this event... read more »
We hear Symantec is replacing Enterprise Vault’s search engine. In a nutshell: EV currently uses the aging AltaVista search engine. This has limited functionality, and support for it is being dropped. In 2014, AltaVista turns read-only: No new material will be indexed, and only searches will be allowed. Symantec has been working on finding a... read more »
Retention management is an important feature of email archiving and it serves two purposes. It: Ensures that email is retained Manages the length of time the email is kept, before it is automatically deleted In other words, retention management manages the email life cycle. Retention is a requirement for industries such as financial services, health... read more »
It’s impossible to keep in control of Exchange/Outlook PST files. All in all, their management is a major pain. Microsoft is very aware of the problem, and its solution is the Archive Mailbox, a new feature of Exchange 2010. Microsoft recommends that all existing PST files be uploaded into the Archive Mailbox. PSTs are still... read more »
It’s not easy to work collaboratively on PowerPoint documents. Basic tools such as change tracking and versioning are not built in. SharedDoc has just announced a solution: Users can post comments and discuss presentations. One person retains control and makes edits. Comments are made via a Web browser. The tool is mainly aimed at cases... read more »
Google announced the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool as part of its ongoing battle to woo Exchange customers over to Google Apps. The tool provides a simple mechanism for small companies wishing to take the leap to Google Apps. Users can upload a comma separated values (.csv) file to Google with the names... read more »
We recently learned about ComArchive. It’s a very simple and attractive approach to archiving. Functionality: Works with Exchange/Outlook 2003/7/10. Archive maintained on-premises or in the cloud. Has Outlook plugin–to access the archive, users click on Archive button. Browser access also available. Everything is archived and users can’t delete material from the archive. So when users... read more »