Entries categorized under “eMail Archive”

One of the most exciting and terrifying times in the lifecycle of a company is transitioning from a small to mid-range or mid-range to enterprise sized company. Well led companies that survive those transitions have often been planning for the occasion for some time. The longer they have been planning the more likely they've become aware of the need for long term archiving. Of everything. (read more)

Email is certainly not "out" as an information source when it comes to doing eDiscovery but structured and unstructured content are definitely "in" as the new primary information sources that global companies access when responding to an eDiscovery request. That is just one of the conclusions reached in Symantec's 2011 Information Retention and eDiscovery Survey announced today that was based on feedback from 2,000 global enterprises and released today. But even as companies change what internal information sources they access during eDiscovery requests, many remain ill-equipped to deal with it. (read more)

Symantec's decision to offer hardware as well as software is generating a lot of buzz among both customers and storage providers alike. But what is getting overlooked is that in order for Symantec to succeed and gain mind share in today's Windows environments, it needs to do more than just offer a hardware/software bundle; Symantec needs to become more Windows friendly in general. That is exactly what Symantec accomplishes by not just adding hardware to its portfolio but adding support for clustered CIFS and tightening its integration with Enterprise Vault in its FileStore v5.6 release. (read more)

Small, mid-sized and large enterprises are not the only ones looking to consolidate and simplify their IT management to create more cohesive management solutions. In the last few years, Symantec has been taking many of the same steps to integrate components of its Backup Exec, Enterprise Vault and NetBackup product suites to deliver solutions appropriate for the different size organizations that it serves. The progress that it has made in delivering on these ideals is reflected in today's Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7 product releases. (read more)

Right now on Yahoo finance it is counting down what it considers the top 10 tech trends for 2010. However some of the trends that it is including in its top 10 are so broad in their definition that when it lists 'Data Centers' as its #2 trend and then identifies nearly every technology company in the space as being part of this trend, you have to question just how real this trend is? The list of what I consider the more subtle storage trends of 2010 will be a bit more specific in terms of what features, products, services and/or vendor alliances are taking place that support these theories. (read more)

Last week's blog took a look at the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. This week I wanted to step even further back and reflect upon the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 regardless of when they were written as I find this insightful in two ways. It lets me know what information continues to hold the attention of readers on as well as what topics from the past might become new trends in 2010. So while there is definitely some overlap between the two, there are also some entries that appear on this list that knock some of the top 10 blogs from last week off the list. (read more)

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

The issue of attorney-client privilege remains one of the most revered privileges that the American judicial system bestows upon clients as it enables any person to communicate open and honestly with his/her attorney. Now this right is under scrutiny as keeping communications between a defendant and his/her attorney has become difficult to achieve due to the increased role that email plays as a form of primary communication medium between them. (read more)

Organizations across the United States have steadily felt the sting of legal action involving eDisocovery as they are quickly discovering that it is no easy feat to comply with mandates such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). This is resulting in mounting sanctions and a steadily decreasing patience in courts towards eDiscovery mistakes. However state and local government agencies were conspicuously absent from this steady stream of eDiscovery rulings. (read more)

No company regardless of its size is immune from the possibility of an eDiscovery. But even as companies look to respond to eDiscovery demands placed on them by rulings such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), an equally vexing problem that they face is making sense of their growing mountain of email data. (read more)

I recently had an interesting conversation with an IT Director who is currently working in health care. We were discussing how his job has evolved with the complexity associated with EMR (electronic medical record) systems and how IT in health care has been especially burdened. Beyond just playing technology catch up, there are numerous regulatory and litigation threats now hovering over it. He specifically pointed to litigation as one area that represents a growing risk to his company's business and how responding to eDiscovery requests for electronic information has become a huge burden. (read more)

DCIG has consistently stressed the need for good eDiscovery processes for electronically stored information (ESI). A steady stream of sanctions surrounding poor eDiscovery strategies is a consistent reminder that a lack of planning can be damaging to your case. A recent case, Ferron v. EchoStar Satellite, LLC., in one such reminder that images and links in emails can be subject to eDiscovery and that the failure to preserve them could be costly. (read more)

"As California goes, so goes the nation" is a phrase that I have heard before and it immediately came to mind when I read that Governor Schwarzenegger had signed California Assembly Bill 5, otherwise known as Chapter 5 - Electronic Discovery Act. Signed into law on June 29th, 2009, what makes this law significant is that it expands upon the verbiage used in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). So for organizations already worrying about the FRCP, take heed because the Electronic Discovery Act takes eDiscovery to yet another level. (read more)

When the wheels came off the American economy in the fall of 2008 there was a steady stream of companies lining up for a government bailout and none were of a higher profile than American Insurance Group (AIG). Over a chorus of jeers from the general public the United States Government set out to rescue the "Too Big to Fail" company by setting up an $85 Billion dollar reserve in exchange for 79% ownership of the company. Emotions ran high during this time period and no matter which side of the aisle you were on in regards to the bailout of AIG, the current SEC complaint against AIG will make most any person angry. (read more)

One of the most significant areas of eDiscovery is performing a relevant keyword search of data to produce the proper documents as mandated by eDiscovery requests. This collection of ESI (electronically stored information) holds particular importance as produced documents will go through a review process prior to producing these to opposing counsel. As data continues to grow within organizations eDiscovery costs continue to rise therefore it is extremely important to have a robust search that reduces non-relevant information during a search. (read more)

Every now and then a study comes along in IT that makes you wonder if the public will ever listen to security alert messages as some of these studies yield results that quite literally make you want to throw your hands up in frustration. A case in point is the recently released study by Message Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) entitled "A Look at Consumers' Awareness of Email Security and Practices." However it is the report's subtitle "Of Course, I Never Reply to Spam - Except Sometimes" is what gets to the heart of the matter and what frustrates me as it shows that email users do understand the risks of spam yet still click on the message. (read more)

A recent report from Ferris Research estimates that the total number of business e-mails sent in North America alone will surpass 139 million in 2009 and 143 million in 2010. This volume of email growth continues to put pressure on IT staff in every size organization to manage its inflow, outflow and retention. While the mechanics of managing emails inflows and outflows can be fairly straightforward, when it comes to setting policies as to how long to retain these emails, the picture can start to get a bit hazy. (read more)

Moving aging, stale or infrequently accessed data from high cost, high performance production storage to lower cost, high capacity value tiers of storage can be easy to justify in enterprise organizations. However explaining the value proposition of archiving this same data in small and midsize businesses (SMBs) is sometimes less clear-cut as they may already store aging emails and file data on low cost local hard drives, inexpensive network file servers and even with Internet cloud storage providers. (read more)

First Louisiana State Court Judge Rosemary Ledet found Dell in contempt of court; then she accused Dell of making a "mockery" of the system; and then, to give her statement some teeth, she hit Dell with a $25,000 fine. Granted, a $25,000 fine is not a huge sum of money for a company like Dell and it certainly was a lot smaller than the $182,000 requested by Plaintiff's attorneys. But the tongue lashing and ensuing fine should serve as a wake-up call to all size organizations that judicial patience in regards to eDiscovery is running thin and callous or indifferent attitudes towards eDiscovery are no longer being tolerated. (read more)

Over the last few years, it is understandable why Symantec Backup Exec users may have felt a little unloved as deduplication has proliferated throughout the backup space. While NetBackup, its data protection product for the enterprise space, was getting all sorts of deduplication capabilities, the best that Backup Exec users could say was, "Hey, we can deduplicate data using 3rd party deduplication appliances." (read more)

"If it really costs millions to do that [e-discovery], then you're going to drive out of the litigation system a lot of people who ought to be there." This quote by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cuts to the heart of current issues surrounding eDiscovery. A recent DCIG blog highlighted how out of control litigation costs have become and have left companies with hard decisions on whether it is best to settle cases based solely on the cost of eDiscovery or attempt to litigate. But as companies face unprecedented economic pressure, a key question comes to mind, "Are these costs driving risky data retention strategies such as destroying all of your data?" (read more)

"There is no truth if you cannot find relevant evidence and, unless companies get their eDiscovery act together, eDiscovery is about to destroy the American System of Justice as we know it." That statement summarizes the opening remarks that Ralph Losey, the noted eDiscovery attorney of FloridaLawFirm.com, made during a recent presentation. From there, he went on to explain why he believes most organizations - public or private, large or small - have no viable strategy for eDiscovery and why a reactive approach to eDiscovery is putting the viability of the American System of Justice as we know it at risk. (read more)

DCIG has posted several blogs discussing the economic downturn, the banking crisis and the role that hedge funds played in the seemingly endless stream of bad news and frauds that have graced the headlines. So, when it was announced that the prominent hedge fund Pequot Capital was shutting down due to the SEC reopening an insider trading probe, it was another sign that the largely unregulated hedge fund industry is back once again in the SEC's crosshairs. (read more)

If somebody had told us that a relative unknown company had come out of nowhere to capture 20% of the small and midsize business (SMB) market in email archiving (according to Gartner) since 2006, we would have thought it a joke. But, that is exactly what we discovered when we recently spoke with ArcMail's CEO Todd Gates. And while ArcMail has flown under the radar screen of most publications and analysts, once we spoke with Gates and began to understand the technology behind ArcMail, we immediately understood why SMBs like the way ArcMail archives email and why they are bringing ArcMail in-house for their email archiving needs. (read more)

It isn't often that bipartisanship wins the day among politicians, but when an issue arises that stirs the ire of the public such as the credit card industry has done there is a sudden ability to get things done. This was evident in the recently passed Senate Bill 414, more commonly referred to as the "Credit Card Act of 2009." In an amazingly bipartisan vote of 90-5 the bill passed. (read more)