Many times I’ve been asked why I made the career choice into archiving and why it absolutely fascinates me still after all these years.  I have to admit that I like technology in its many different ways.   For someone who is in IT one has to realize that the archiving/content management space is one of the few software areas that hasn’t been fully or largely defined yet.
Not much fundamentally is going to change about databases or messaging systems and the same counts for antivirus or most security products, but for archiving it isn’t clear yet.  In an article about 6 months ago I described the expected life stages of archiving solutions where as the final stage would be that the content in the archives themselves would be mined to be used for other usage scenario’s (stage 5).  Right now we are about in stage 3, but the final stage could still be years away.

As a technologist it is fascinating to be able to help define the future of a market that is growing rapidly and keeping up with the changes and innovation done by the many vendors is sometimes challenging but it keeps me on my toes.  Mandatory reading material isn’t always fun, but it allows you to get insight in something or allows you to be able to take a different look at the same problem.    Its the ‘being able to push the envelope’ that truly is exciting and the archiving space has plenty of it still (however … sometimes it is nice to go back to the simpler days .. and I do that .. each week working on the old classic car that I have).

Well .. finally .. after like years of not really doing much with EmailXtender and falling behind on the rest of the marketspace EMC has announced their roadmap for email archiving and its called Documentum:

http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/news/2217435/emc-documentum-product-roadmap

and

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1314542,00.html# 

In the fourth quarter, according to Lewis, email archiving will get another update through a project code-named Janus, which he described as “next-generation email archiving” for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. “For the first time, we’re not going to be selling email archiving as a standalone product,” he said. New applications and interfaces planned for Documentum in the third quarter, including new collaboration and social networking software, will have “day one” compatibility with the archive, he added. 

Maybe I’m the only one, but last time I checked people really wanted an archiving solution that was ’standalone’ and allowed to be integrated with other solutions as they didn’t want to tackle an entire ECM suite.  Comments/Thoughts?

I ran across this article through one of my RSS feeds that I have setup and it is something that many of us might not have thought about.

“Widely seen as an unworthy substitute for paper-borne dispatches, email is being recast through a collection of funny and heartfelt messages deemed worthy of preservation.”

read the entire post at the link below

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/bits-of-history-receiving/2008/05/22/1211182999960.html

Source: http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=154061

Archiving specialist Mimosa has scored $17 million in funding to expand its global presence and overhaul its NearPoint software.

The round, which was led by Focus Ventures, also included August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, and Mayfield Fund. It brings Mimosa’s total funding to $51.5 million.

“We’re using this money primarily for global expansion,” says T.M. Ravi, the Mimosa CEO, explaining that the vendor will be targeting the U.K., Germany, China, Australia, and Japan. “It’s to add sales, pre-sales support, and professional services staff in all regions.”

As part of this effort, Mimosa will add up to 45 employees to its 185-strong workforce by the end of the year, according to the CEO.

The vendor is also planning to open up its NearPoint offering to third-party applications later this year. By opening up the software’s APIs, T.M. Ravi expects to boost the product’s eDiscovery capabilities.

“There’s literally 50 to 75 product and services vendors in ediscovery,” he says, explaining that this ranges from content analysis to legal case management. The exec would not reveal which vendors will be part of this effort, although potential candidates could include the likes of Kazeon, which recently introduced software for early case and risk assessment.

“We plan to make an announcement at the end of June,” says the CEO, adding that Mimosa has other product enhancements planned for the fall timeframe. “We want to go after a broader market around user-based content and content from collaboration tools.”

This seems likely to mean support for Microsoft SharePoint, something which has been a notable gap in Mimosa’s arsenal.

NearPoint started life as a Microsoft Exchange product, although the vendor has added Instant Messaging, file archiving, and some support for Lotus Notes, which will be enhanced later this year. Rivals Symantec and Zantaz, in contrast, also support SharePoint.

The Mimosa CEO told Byte and Switch that, despite its current lack of SharePoint support, the vendor has managed to rack up over 470 customers, 233 of whom were added in 2007.

One of these customers, Frank McGurk, IT coordinator at Wilmington, Delaware-based accounting firm Siegfried Group says that, more than Sharepoint, he would like to see Mimosa flesh out its mobile messaging story.

“If there’s integration with BlackBerrys, that would be useful,” he explains. “It’s our leadership team and our sales team that mainly rely on them — they are joined at the hip with their blackBerrys.”

Mimosa’s T.M. Ravi denies the suggestion that this week’s funding round was born out of desperation, explaining that the vendor is in no way struggling for money.

“We’re generating cash — huge amounts,” he says, adding that he is even eyeing a possible public offering, although this will not be anytime soon. “We’re driving towards an IPO — it’s hard to say, but [maybe] 2010.”

Whether this happens of not, one thing is for certain: the email archiving market is on an upswing.

Analyst firm IDC estimates that the applications archiving market grew 45 percent over the last year, largely driven by storage and ediscovery requirements. Analysts estimate that the total market for archiving and ediscovery will be worth more than $2 billion by 2011.

I keep listening to the extensive stories from Archiving vendors bashing eachother that one uses 200MB more then the other while at the same time they are touting that their software can store their data on cheap storage.  While I do understand that there are differences one has to understand that over time this whole point largely has become irrelevant especially since the pricing has come down on hardware.  For example … lets build a 2TB NAS storage on the cheap:

1TB HD 182 dollars

NAS Enclosure  130 dollars

Thats less then 500 dollars ….

Nick Mehta, previously responsible for Enterprise Vault for years has landed a new gig as CEO at LiveOffice.  He already served on the board at LiveOffice, but has now taken up a new responsibility.   Seems like when you are in this space you can never leave it

More info in the press release http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=857046

This went out earlier this week already to other sources.  If you’d like to attend the upcoming meeting on May 28th then please RSVP to this address

We do UC.

Unified Communications (UC) is Microsoft’s vision for a seamless platform of e-mail, instant messaging, voice, video, conferencing, and telephony. Organizations that use Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are discovering that UC empowers their users in exciting new ways.

Who are we?

We are the Pacific Northwest Unified Communications User Group (PNWUCUG) and we have a passion for UC. If you are one of the following, you could be one of us:

·         IT professionals in the Pacific Northwest who design, deploy, or manage Exchange Server, Live Communications Server, and Office Communications Server systems.

·         Developers who write or maintain solutions that integrate, extend, or provide UC capabilities to Exchange Server, Live Communications Server, and Office Communications Server and clients.

·         Industry experts with a recognized expertise in UC.

·         Hobbyists who are exploring Microsoft-based UC solutions.

You are welcome to visit our website at http://www.ucdoers.org/ and come join us!

The PNWUCUG is sponsored by Microsoft, Mimosa Systems, EMC, and 3Sharp.

Where do we meet?

You are invited to join us on Wednesday, May 28, from 4:00PM to 8:00PM for our inaugural meeting.

There are two ways you can participate:

·         Join us in person for appetizers and drinks at:

The Parlor Billiards & Spirits

700 Bellevue Way NE Suite 300

3^rd floor of Lincoln Square

425-289-7000

Free parking in Lincoln Square’s parking garage.

·         Join us via Live Meeting. See the information below.

Whichever way you plan to attend, please send us an email to let us know you’re coming.

What do we do?

Our goal is to sponsor a variety of events and activities throughout the Pacific Northwest region, bringing you and your peers together with a variety of speakers and UC experts. For this first event, we’re pleased to announce:

·         Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice President of Exchange at Microsoft

·         Eric Swift, Senior Director of Product Management for the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft

·         Devin Ganger, Messaging Architect and Microsoft Exchange MVP at 3Sharp

·         Martin Tuip,  Business Development Manager and Microsoft Exchange MVP at Mimosa Systems

However, we’re just getting started – we need your input and help! Come prepared to let us know what you want out of this user group.

Live Meeting information

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting. To use computer audio, you need speakers and a microphone, or a headset.

Join the Live Meeting automatically or use the following information to manually join:

·         Copy this address and paste into your web browser:
https://www416d.rtcppe.com/cc/ms_beta/join

·         Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: 694T58
Entry Code: 6′P\x&{p2
Location: https://www416d.rtcppe.com/cc/ms_beta

·         Audio dial-in: 866-500-6738
Participant pass code: 178902

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mimosa Systems, a leader in live content archiving solutions, today unveiled Mimosa NearPoint™ File System Archiving (FSA), a powerful archiving option that enables users to retain, retrieve and recover critical, free-range files alongside millions of emails, attachments, instant messages, and content from backup tapes stored in an integrated content-aware archive. Built on the award-winning Mimosa NearPoint platform, this new offering provides Mimosa customers with the most advanced content archive that addresses critical requirements for storage optimization, end-user information access, eDiscovery, content monitoring, and recovery in a single solution.

The widespread growth of unmanaged, free-range electronic files, such as Microsoft® Office files, Adobe® PDF files, and others, creates a critical challenge for enterprises trying to control storage costs, maintain content according to their retention and deletion policies, and find and preserve these files in the face of stringent discovery requirements.

Mimosa NearPoint FSA moves files from premium production storage to lower cost archive storage. FSA utilizes advanced stubbing technology that coordinates the use of network and backup processes while preserving the look and feel of the original file that was stored on the production disk. End-users can access the files as they normally would, while administrators see immediate benefits of storage reduction and optimized primary storage performance.

Mimosa FSA allows enterprises to significantly reduce storage costs while improving storage management and the backup efficiency of file servers containing thousands of free-range files. Legal staff can now rapidly search both files and email with a single search query, and preserve these files in place, lowering the cost of collection, and facilitating a quick export to downstream review or analytics applications.

“Mimosa NearPoint FSA promises to deliver advanced information archiving for retention, electronic discovery, auditing and access, further aligning our IT systems with core operational requirements,” said Bruce Lorimer, Information Systems Supervisor for the County of Madera. “With the NearPoint archiving solution in place, we will be able to satisfy legal and operational demands for a more compliant and efficient organization.”

Within organizations, users typically store content on a network file system because it is easy to do. However, this storage strategy makes central management very difficult because file systems are not managed content repositories with check-in services, search indexes, and version control. File system content presents a major challenge to organizations for several reasons:

• Production storage costs can soar out of control as users routinely store multiple copies of the same content.
• Retention and disposition policies are difficult to enforce, negatively impacting the cost and time to comply with an eDiscovery request.
• Locating sensitive information such as customer information, trade secrets and intellectual property that was saved to the file system before the organization had polices directing usage.

“Mimosa’s new file system archive allows organizations to store more information at lower costs while addressing retention and legal preservation concerns,” said Brian Babineau, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “NearPoint FSA allows employees to access files as they normally would because administrators can leave stubbed files on the file system providing them seamless access to their information. Compliance officers and records managers are ensured that information is properly retained and IT administrators can easily configure and operate the solution with enhanced management capabilities.”

Mimosa NearPoint FSA –The Industry’s Next-Generation File System Archive

With Mimosa NearPoint FSA, administrators can:

• Manage production storage costs with policies that move files to lower cost archive storage devices based on attributes such as type, size, age, and last access date.
• Consistently apply retention and disposition policies across files, emails, attachments, and instant messages from one administrative interface.
• Maintain a seamless end-user experience with advanced placeholders that point to archived content while preserving the look and feel of the original files when browsing with Microsoft Windows Explorer®.
• Lower archive storage costs with advanced de-duplication across multiple copies of files — files that are sent as attachments and files contained on backup tapes.
• Expedite eDiscovery by searching and preserving relevant files alongside email and instant messages using a single search, and cull-down user interface.
• Lower risk by creating alerts for content at rest on the file system that was created before a policy for sensitive information was implemented.
• Enable faster, more granular file system recovery, and reduce the need to restore individual items from backup tapes.
• Avoid backup issues typically associated with first-generation file system archiving products by coordinating with the backup process to optionally protect content behind the end-user stub.

“NearPoint File System Archiving gives enterprises a powerful archive to take control of distributed file stores to reduce storage costs and retain, retrieve, and recover critical information to meet stringent compliance and eDiscovery requirements,” said T.M. Ravi, CEO, Mimosa Systems. “With the introduction of this solution, Mimosa provides companies with the most comprehensive and advanced content archiving platform for email, files, and instant messages stored in a unified repository.”

An small update about the ‘lost’ Whitehouse emails.  I found this article well written .. but what mostly was shameful from an archiving vendors point was how this, obvious important data, was captured and retained:

“Instead, the White House has instituted a comically primitive system called “journaling,” in which (to quote from a recent Congressional report) “a White House staffer or contractor would collect from a ‘journal’ e-mail folder in the Microsoft Exchange system copies of e-mails sent and received by White House employees.” These would be manually named and saved as “.pst” files on White House servers.  ”

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails

Read the entire article here