Archiving101.com

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1576642079;fp;4;fpid;1382389953

 Security software vendor Webroot plans to acquire Email Systems, a provider of e-mail and Web protection services.

The acquisition, which is set to be announced on Tuesday, will give Webroot a new line of “software as a service” (SaaS) products to complement its existing security software. Webroot sells a popular anti-spyware program called Spy Sweeper.

Based in Westerham, UK, Email Systems sells e-mail, Web and data archiving management services. The company also has offices in France, Sweden, Holland and Australia, and its services are used to manage 2.5 million mailboxes.

Following the acquisition, Webroot will sell Email Systems’ Web-based services under the brand name Webroot Email Security SaaS, a representative from Webroot’s public relations agency wrote in an e-mail disclosing the planned acquisition, sent late Monday.

“Webroot Email Security SaaS will be an important piece to the layered security approach by offering levels of network protection beyond what an on-premise solution can provide,” the spokesman wrote.

More details on the purchase are set to be disclosed on Tuesday morning, he added.

 I presume that all of the readers of this blog are fully aware of what the Patriot Act is and what it means for the archiving industry.  I grew up in Europe and one of the mistakes that I see many non-Europeans make is to ignore the fact that Europeans value their privacy.  Especially in France and Germany ‘personal privacy’ is high on the list of employees and many archiving vendors are struggling with how to ‘market’ their product in these large markets.

The German parliament has however passed the German Data retention law very recently… a law that triggered 10,000 people to protest in the streets of Berlin.   I found this article an interesting read and for those not fully aware that European culture is different then the North American it could give you a little insight into it.

I stumbled across this excellent writeup  by Chuck Arconi.  He and his organization were apparently looking for an archiving product and in his writeup he describes his experiences dealing with some of the archiving vendors and products in the market during the selection process.  For me what stands out is the following quote:

“I was very impressed with their willingness and dedication to make the system perfect in our environment no matter what.”

Customers like it when they feel respected. I always like to give people I talk with or deal with the same respect as I expect others to give me .. these are simple rules to live by.

I ran into the following FAQ of Sunbelts Exchange Archiver (the rebranded ExchangePAM product) today :

http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Government-Education/Sunbelt-Exchange-Archiver/FAQ/#19

Q: What is ‘Direct Archiving’ what is new about it, and how does it work? 

A: Direct Archiving is when the message is immediately archived when it hits the Exchange server, bypassing the need of journaling, its more efficient. Direct Archiving is done with an Information Store event sink, not MAPI. 

It has to be noted though that the Exchange Store Event functionality has been deemphasized  in Exchange 2007 and in Microsoft terms this means that it will be cut from the product.  The logical replacement for Store Events are actually webservices, however the performance of the Exchange Webservices is actually below of that what MAPI gives you.

At first this really seems interesting and fascinating .. I mean .. most who have worked with MAPI know its limitations … to get a decent throughput of the data you will need large amounts of threads and opting to pursue other ways are definately refreshing.

So I was scheduled to speak at a Microsoft event this morning and came well prepared.  I like speaking in public at events and while I only had limited time to make the slide decks my own I wasn’t too worried, after all .. what could potentially go wrong.  With backup machines available for demos .. having presentations stored not in one location (I know of people who actually spilled water over their laptop during a presentation, or their laptop died on the way to a meetingroom) … this morning hickup was new.  15 minutes before the presentation started a car hit the powerpole outside of the building and we lost power.  Event cancelled … at least I got a cup of coffee. 

 So if you ever write project plans and are working on the ‘risk’ chapter .. plan properly and think about all the things that COULD go wrong.

AXS One reported their Q3 results today  …. it has been an interesting company to follow from purely a financial point of view … last month they voluntarely delisted from the American Stock Exchange and are now trading on the OTC board and the history of their financial results are ‘interesting’ in my point of view.

 The Q3 results were a net loss of 4.6 million … down from 5.2 million last year .. total net losses for 2007 in the first 9 months are 10.9 million compared to 15 million loss in the first 9 months of 2006.   With 2.5 million dollars in cash, a 2.5 million dollar credit and a 3.75 million dollar convertible note agreement signed today it sure doesn’t look positive to me. 

I have to say that this blog gets a lot of very colorful comments and some of them I can’t post because of the language used.  However I would like to respond to one of those from a UK reader who did not want to leave his real name or email address.  One of his statements was that logshipping isn’t suitable for anything but LAN usage. 

Unfortunately this is incorrect.  Log shipping has been around for quite some time .. as far as I know SQL has had logshipping for ages now.   Also one of the new features that arrived in Exchange 2007 (Cluster Continuous Replication) allows for replication between 2 datacenters.

As I posted a little while ago on the upcoming Symantec/Vontu acquisition .. the agreement has finally been signed.  I do see that the remaining companies in this space will be snapped up in the near future as well as the DLP space is pretty hot and rising.

http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/8449

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vontu, for $350 million, which will be paid in cash and assumed options. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth calendar quarter of 2007, subject to receiving regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.

Data loss prevention solutions help organizations prevent the loss of confidential or proprietary information wherever it is stored or being used. Vontu’s products will complement Symantec’s existing portfolio of endpoint and network security, storage and compliance solutions, to provide customers with the most comprehensive platform for data loss prevention on the market today.

Symantec expects this transaction to be $0.02 dilutive to FY08 non-GAAP earnings per share and expects FY08 GAAP earnings per share to be more diluted due to purchase accounting, stock based compensation and acquisition related charges associated with the transaction.

I’m at Exchange Connections this week in Las Vegas and if you’d like .. look me up for a chat.

Found this article at the deathbyemail blog:

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An opponent of the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline said it was a joke when he wrote: “blow them up with several sacks of fertilizer and a gallon of diesel fuel.”  Funny, the FBI wasn’t laughing.

“I’m not a violent person. I’m an old man,” said Richard Starke, 76, of Burlington, N.D., who owns land along the proposed Keystone pipeline route, in the Canadian Press. 

The email was sent Monday to other opponents of the line, with a copy to Public Service Commissioner Susan Wefald.  She turned the email over to the state Highway Patrol. Lt. Mike Gerhart, a patrol spokesman, said they made Capitol security staff aware of it, “and the information was forwarded to federal authorities” — that is, the FBI, according to the Jamestown Sun.

PSC Commissioner Kevin Cramer considered the threat “rhetorical and not literal,” from “a passionate opponent (who) expresses himself with strong rhetoric, but is a faithful patriot and good citizen.”

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This is in my opinion an example of what could happen when a single email is singled out and not the entire thread history is preserved that might have led up to this comment.  On its own a single email could be extremely infrinching, but when the entire thread history is preserved it could prevent ‘false positives’.  I am of the opinion though that this was a very poor choice of words …