Archiving101.com

I speak regularly on archiving and related technologies, not only on webinars and seminars, but also on larger conferences.  Penton Media organizes events twice a year which they call the Connections events.  These are held during the spring and fall of each year.  This fall is a little bit different and they have decided to make all of their conferences available online so that you can still enjoy the conference and watch it online.

I am hosting a session on PST consolidation (one of my favorite topics). So if you can’t convince your organization to send you to the conference, you can save the airfare and hotel and watch the online presentations you want to watch for a small fee.

Connections isn’t just restricted to Exchange as there are other Connections tracks available too: SharePoint, Windows, SQL, ASP.NET, etc. Visit the main website for Connections Online! for more information.

In choosing an archiving solution for SharePoint, it is important to ask these questions:

• What scope of SharePoint content and metadata is captured? Some solutions capture only a portion of SharePoint content, e.g., specific documents or document collections. This kind of capture supports fine-grained recovery. Others capture not only document-type content, but also all the context data for the environment—the rich data that makes a SharePoint site interactive (lists, blog and wiki entries, front-end web server information, and more). All of this content and metadata is important for eDiscovery, compliance, and recovery; a holistic archiving solution must capture and store it all. When content and context are captured, it is possible to perform coarse-grained recovery to restore or migrate full SharePoint environments.

• How is the SharePoint content captured? Content can be captured from SharePoint continuously or periodically. Continuous capture of all content related to specific departments guarantees your needs for compliance and eDiscovery are covered.

• Does the solution provide more than just lower-cost storage? Archives provide great value in enabling the move of content from production systems to cheaper storage, but an archive that can also facilitate recovery provides even greater value. Having archiving and recovery in one solution means less complexity for IT to manage and greater operational efficiency and cost savings.

• How does the archiving solution enable end-users to access SharePoint content? When end users go to SharePoint to get their content, they don’t want to be redirected and they don’t want to search two repositories for data. Rather, the right solution will make access seamless, leaving content directly accessible through the SharePoint interface. It will also integrate seamlessly with the SharePoint search index, allowing archived content to appear in search results alongside active content. Be sure that your archiving solution enables seamless end-user access so that you don’t have to train users on new ways to access their information.

• How does the solution enable eDiscovery and retention management? Since the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) took effect in 2006, organizations have struggled to implement defensible litigation holds, especially on high-volume content sources like SharePoint. A good archiving solution will allow very granular controls over retention; that granular control stems from comprehensive capture capabilities and flexible retention rules. A unified content archive allows an organization to quickly implement item-level litigation holds and conduct eDiscovery through one simple interface.

• Is the solution part of an integrated content archiving platform? The most efficient archiving solution unifies email, file, and SharePoint archiving. Not only does this make tasks like setting litigation holds faster and easier, but it reduces storage costs by providing single-instance storage across all the content sources.

I hear many stories and FUD can be pretty crafty, but the one I heard this week topped it all:

“Don’t use this companies software as their eDiscovery module has a backdoor and will forward all your email to the US Government”

I’m withholding the vendor that brought this up … but crazy stuff like this isn’t going to be very effective.