It is of my opinion that there are almost zero reasons to legitimately have PST files in a corporate environment and I have been speaking on this topic a few times in the past.  Many people underestimate how bad the problem / infestiation of PST files is in their organization and its erradication can be a long and tricky process actually unless you have adequate tools available for you like Iron Mountain NearPoint and its PST Archiving Option.  On August 10th I will present the latest on how to plan to get rid of PST files.  Learn everything that you need to know about how to tackle such a project.  You can register for the webinar here.

I’ve been in this industry for most of the last decade now and have seen pretty much all the ways archiving products can and have been deployed in organizations. From small to Fortune 500, they all are slightly different in the way their internal IT is being managed and used.  Archiving products can have a big impact on your infrastructure with requirements and there is one particular piece that I’d like to highlight in this post that many forget.

Time and time again we see news stories and legal case writes ups where it has become obvious employees still have no idea that an email is not a private communication. I find most employees, even corporate legal department types, still consider an email is like a verbal conversation in a parking lot; once its ended, it doesn’t exist anymore (unless it was recorded).

The law firm of Gibson Dunn has just published their mid-year Electronic Discovery and Information Law Update and pointed out some interesting trends. The report can be viewed here.

From the Gibson Dunn report:

Of the 103 opinions Gibson Dunn analyzed, litigants sought sanctions in 30% (or 31)–compared to 42% in all of 2009–and received sanctions in 68% of those cases (or 21)–compared to 70% in all of 2009.

I recently ran across a few articles on  U.K. developer CPC Group Ltd and Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co, which is the real-estate investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund. The decision was that Qatari Diar wrongfully backed out of a deal to redevelop London’s landmark Chelsea Barracks site after the plan was opposed by Prince Charles, a judge ruled.  

The eDiscoveryJournal, recently ran an article about desktop collection for eDiscovery and mentioned the case of Roffe v Eagle Rock, a case involving custodial self-discovery and expectations from the Judge. The transcript from the conversation between the Judge and both parties of the case can be seen here.

Reuters had an interesting article on social media policies on June 28 at:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLNE65R01920100628

The article pointed out that trying to stop employees from participating in the social media revolution is near impossible and is not the right strategy in any case. The article advocated giving employees some ground rules (via written policy) about what can be written and to always use a “professional” conduct.

Ok, I know there is a push back from the legal industry in reference to the problem of the cost of discovery. Yes, companies create, use, receive and delete huge amounts of electronic information on a daily basis and it is unreasonable to expect an organization to have enough of a handle on this moving target to be able to place an effective legal hold – quickly, and provide all responsive information in response to an eDiscovery request. But come on… organizations live and die by their information, especially electronic information and if an organization doesn’t have enough of a handle on their data to be able to place a legal hold on select data, then I’m sorry they have other problems.

In the recent case; Jones v. Bremen High School Dist. 228, 2010 WL 2106640 (N.D. Ill. May 25, 2010), one of the discovery points made in the decision was what is the appropriate legal hold process to meet an organization’s legal hold responsibilities.

Snapshotting archivable data to your archive

A while back I already wrote about this briefly, but I’d like to bring it up again simply because the technology and idea behind it is so fascinating.
Users of NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Iron Mountain’s newly-acquired NearPoint™ solution for archiving, accessing and protecting email. InterVision’s customers can
enjoy high performance, manageability and lower operating costs by combining leading technology from NetApp and Iron Mountain in a single integrated solution for managing
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