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http://www.ediscoverylaw.com/2009/07/articles/news-updates/governor-schwarzenegger-signs-californias-electronic-discovery-act-to-be-effective-immediately/

After previously vetoing a prior version of the bill for budgetary reasons, Governor Schwarzenegger signed California’s Electronic Discovery Act last night, to be effective immediately. Closely tracking the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the act institutes procedures to guide the discovery of electronically stored information in California.

To read the full text of the Electronic Discovery Act, click here.

I’ve broken down and am also now on Twitter.  Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/mtuip if you are interested.

It seems that not much people have been willing to touch on this subject so far so maybe I’m going to be the first one here.  As you all probably know by now, Microsoft announced Exchange 2010 back in April 15th and one of the features in Exchange 2010 that got a lot of peoples attention is that it will have build in archiving, retention and eDiscovery. I am purposely not going to single out archive company names in this article.

Microsoft positions Exchange 2010 as a ‘personal archive’ and not as ‘business archive’ solution.  The distinction is there for many reasons.  First of all, Microsoft will with this solution only focus on allowing organizations to get rid of PST files, implement large mailboxes and provide advanced search.  It will not provide records management and preservation of electronic information beyond Exchange.  It is of my opinion then though that the larger enterprises who are going to look for a more complete solution that offers functionality beyond the basics which includes:

• Integration with software and applications to manage the eDiscovery process.  Search is not eDiscovery .. a proper eDiscovery application allows you to use advanced queries to create and narrow down search result sets, review and tag this data and more (i.e. case management)
• Allow for capturing content from more than just Exchange.  Many organizations are already capturing File System data, and are moving towards implementing SharePoint as well.  Capturing more content in a unified archive makes sense for not only storage reasons but also legal and compliance reasons.

Exchange falls short of the above, but it will probably gain traction in this space more or less with the smaller organizations that are going to look for a basic archiving solution.  These customers have been there all along and are happily served by some of the around 85 companies now in this space.  I personally think that Microsoft will start to take away business from the vendors that don’t offer anything beyond email, those that provide solutions that cover the basics.  After all .. why should a company spend money to buy the exact same ‘basic solution’ from a 3rd party when it is in the base product.

Now .. there are many things that Exchange 2010 doesn’t solve, so organizations that are looking at Exchange 2010 need to clearly understand what can be done with the application and what not.  If you are looking for case management in eDiscovery .. nope .. isn’t there .. if you are looking for a solution that can locate and ingest your PST files in your network beyond the file server .. nope .. can’t do that either.  Do your homework well and make a good decision, but make sure that if you are thinking about archiving beyond Exchange (File Systems and SharePoint) even if you might not do that now but next year  , you have to pick a vendor that can offer that and not pick one that will block you down the road

I will be hosting a Bird of a Feather roundtable next week during Teched in Los Angeles, CA .. and it might be nice to meet you if you are going.

BOF02 Regulatory Compliance, Archiving, and Electronic Discovery with Microsoft Exchange Server
Mon 5/11 | 2:45 PM-4:00 PM | Room 501A

Birds-of-a-Feather, Microsoft® Exchange Server

Regulatory compliance has become a core requirement for many companies. Producing e-mail evidence for courts or regulatory organizations can be challenging, given the massive volumes of data, the intricacies of the legal process, and the disparity that often exists between legal and IT departments. We discuss the compliance functionality in Microsoft Exchange Server, such as archiving and electronic discovery, complementary needs for companies wishing to be proactive in compliance. Come and share the solutions you’ve found to assist in dealing with Exchange compliance.

Speaker Bio:

Martin Tuip is a nine-time Microsoft® MVP for Exchange Server. He started his IT career in system administration, but has gone on to focus most of his career on archiving and compliance products. Martin is the webmaster of several resource sites and discussion groups for Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint and regularly speaks on email archiving and Exchange Server.

I don’t always just nitpick on individual products or features, but for the last few weeks I’ve been really thinking about how we as a society are going to preserve our electronic heritage. We all can walk to our local museum that proudly will display documents, books and other written manuscripts but how will this preservation be done for our electronic digital records. Preserving records has been defined as:

“the planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies necessary to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable”. 

Additionally authenticity may be added to this definition.  According to a paper written by Det Norske Veritas called “SURVIVABILITY OF DIGITAL RECORDS” digital preservation addresses hardware (e.g. storage media, reading and processing hardware), software (e.g. reading and processing), data models (e.g. file formats, preservation metadata) and involved processes (e.g. migration or conversion procedures, emulation strategies, obsolescence detection, quality assurance, and all kind of documentations). A digital record is defined as a record created or received and/or maintained by means of digital computer technology. A digital record is thereby not just the digital equivalent of a paper document but can virtually be anything that can be created and stored on a computer. In this respect digital records are not tangible objects but a combination of hardware, software and computer files. This combination is necessary to be able to use the records. The digital record “lives” (i.e. is only useful within a software environment) but is consigned to a physical carrier medium for storage. This dual nature of digital records tremendously complicates the long term survival problem. It both requires addressing the physical media and its durability or lack thereof, i.e. storage media and hardware equipment, and it requires maintaining a suitable living condition for the record, i.e. the program and/or operating system. No wonder the survival of digital records for decades or centuries is yet an unresolved problem.

I have to apologize for not posting this earlier as I have been speaking at the Microsoft UC Conference on archiving in Exchange 2010 this week (more on that in a later post).  AXS One released its 2008 annual financial report this week and the wording in it was pretty harsh. Things like:

“

because the Company has incurred recurring net losses, has an accumulated deficit and has a working capital deficiency as of December 31, 2008, there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern“

“Additionally, the Company’s convertible debt approximating $13 million at April 8, 2009 matures on May 29, 2009 and the Company does not have the capital to pay these notes”

” If we are unable to achieve profitable operations or secure additional sources of capital in the near term, in addition to restructuring our convertible debt, there would be substantial doubt about our ability to fund future operations through the second quarter of 2009. Management could also consider merger and acquisition activity.”

But .. have no fear .. as on Thursday the company got acquired for 9 Million dollars in stock by Unify who has been picking up other companies recently.  AXS One will continue to operate under the wings of Unify as a subsidiary.

Microsoft announced on April 14, 2009 the beta release availability of Exchange 2010 (known under the code name of Exchange 14).  Exchange 2010 will be the successor of Exchange 2007 in the future.  This isn’t the final release of the product as that is slated for the second half of this year for now and which might change.

What is notably new in this release?

 You can download Beta 1 from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1898ed2c-2f88-48ac-824e-d3d20fad77d7

Source: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1353159,00.html#

So the new Symantec CEO stressed this week in Techtarget about product integration and that NetBackup and Enterprise Vault will share a common interface and policy structure. Quoting:

“Why touch data more than once? Users should be able to migrate directly from backup to archives or vice versa under a single policy,” Salem said. “We see backup and recovery and archive becoming features, ultimately with the same management interface.”

I have to say here that Symantec is finally seeing the light, but I would like to remind them and the my readers that this isn’t anything new under the sun at all as CommVault and in some extend Mimosa Systems have been doing this for years.   It is my opinion that this is eventually going to be part of the future of archiving systems.  It makes no sense to store data multiple times or being touched by multiple applications.

Source: http://www.arma.org/news/enewsletters/index.cfm?ID=3449

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Google may be making deceptive claims about the security of documents stored in its Gmail and Google Docs services. The complaint cites an error that allowed users to access documents without proper permission. Google contends the error affected only users who had already shared documents and involved less than .5% of all documents held. EPIC also claims that, while Google promises secure data storage, the company’s terms of service note that it is not liable for harm. EPIC is urging the FTC to investigate.

Any of the SaaS vendors recently taken a look at their Terms of Service?

It looks like Cryoserver bit the dust again a little while ago .. its website hasn’t been updated in months.  Cryoserver went bankrupt about 2 years ago, but tried to make a fresh start.  What is not very known is that appliance software of Cryoserver is the same software that Trend Micro sells, but rebranded.

Competition is tough in the archiving market and you better have a good differentiating product to survive.