Archiving101.com

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