Friday, March 30, 2007

FRCP article

Retention still critical

Thursday, March 29, 2007

By Mark Fellows mfellows@mbusinessreview.com

Automated backup systems for information technology shouldn't be relied on for archiving purposes, a consultant warns, as new court discovery rules are applied to electronic documents.

Rules now in effect make it more important for businesses to provide for electronic-information archiving and search capabilities before being forced to by a lawsuit, lawyers say.

Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make the availability of electronic records -- transactions, communications, even voice mail -- among the first issues to be discussed in any federal lawsuit. Parties have between 60 and 90 days to confer on a discovery plan after a complaint is filed.

Click here to read full article

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

More Messaging Management Moguls

Thanks to Roger Matus of Death by Email for reaching out and for the shoutout today.

I am looking forward to hearing more from writers/bloggers/podcasters etc. in the messaging space. This space is getting more and more attention in organization since the email and instant message have become so vital in legal proceedings and compliance violations.

This is a major reason why I enjoyed learning about Roger's company, Inboxer. They are in the search, supervision, and surveillance space in the messaging industry which I think is the prime place to be these days. Of course employees need to be able to search their old emails for information in a way that is fast and efficient, but lawyers and compliance officers are under a big green dollar-sign shaped gun that comes in the form of a regulatory or litigation request and not only do they need a quick response tool, they need the promise that the right information is in their response and the wrong information is out; that they are not providing more information than they must; and that they can explain the relevance of what they do provide.

Any time spent developing products in this space is time well spent in my mind, with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure taking effect, everyone will need to manage their message stores better and everyone will need these products, not just big banks and public multinationals, everyone.



Good Email Archiving Article in WSJ

The Wall Street Journal published an article on email archiving in Monday's edition. Nothing groundbreaking, just a quick story about how an inability to produce emails in a timely fashion has burned companies in the past.

The new piece here is the fact that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect at the end of last year which applies strict guidelines to storing and producing all electronic data that is created within an organization. This is a firm encouragement for not just heavily regulated and public companies to manage their information better, but for all companies to archive communications and be able to produce them in the event of a litigation request.

You need a WSJ subscription to read the full text of this article online, if you can't access it, please let me know and I can assist.

Letter of the Law
Email is becoming a big factor in court cases -- so companies are looking for better ways to sort through it when trouble hits
By MICHAEL TOTTY


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117434583190242025.html

Monday, March 12, 2007

Virtual Tape Libraries/Disk to Disk Backup???

I have recently been introduced to new technology that has compression rates on storage that is enough to cause refridgerator toting storage vendors to quiver in their boots. This technology, which is delivered by the likes of Data Domain and others claims to take take time, money, stress, and annoyance out of tape-based backup and can reduce the amount of disk storage required up to 300 times or something like that...

So, my question, is this the future? Is this really happening? Are storage vendors really threatened by this technology?

I would assume that the EMC's of the world have a response; or a product of their own; or an M&A team working on something as I type this message.

Educate me...

Thursday, March 1, 2007

ZipLip is Number 1, this is why.

Email archiving is a rapidly growing industry. It is not just for the wealthy companies that are under scrutiny by the SEC, NASD, DoJ, Attourney General, etc. Now more than ever investors, employees, stockholders, hedge funds, private equity companies, competitors, and the general public are analyzing companies to the core to protect their interests. Archiving companies need to be flexible.

They need to be omni-agnostic; this means that they cannot specialize on servers; storage; email platform; existing applications, industry, or philosophy. By philosophy I mean whether you want something held in house, hosted, or as an appliance that can be rolled and and turn-key operated.

ZipLip is the only archiving vendor that I have seen that does this, hands down. If I am wrong, let me know, because if someone else is out there and can compete with ZipLip in this market, you need to fire your marketing person and get someone else who knows what they are doing.