Archive for May, 2008

I came across an interesting blog entry here at eWeek. Looks like my former employer (and still good friend) Forrester Research has released interesting data around email security. What does that have to do with email archiving and eDiscovery, you might ask. Well, maybe not a whole lot at this very second, but there is a convergence between archiving and security - one that will heat up in 2009.

I admit it - I simply cannot get retention management off my mind. My problem is this: as a former analyst covering records management software, I know well that organizations wan to deploy RM systems to help ensure compliance and make eDiscovery more manageable. And yet, with each passing day and each meeting I attend, enterprise-wide RM software looks more and more like overkill. Don’t get me wrong - some of the RM software out there represents genius thinking and advanced functionality. But, most of the organizations out there simply are not ready to deploy sophisticated retention management software.

Lots of chatter on the recent Kazeon / Attenex announcement that promises eDiscovery processing costs as low as $4.30 per Gigabyte. Many experienced eDiscovery folks have cried foul, citing the intricate details of eDiscovery processing and the inherent costs. C’mon folks - somewhere the twain shall meet. eDiscovery processing costs are going to come down no matter what. The technology for processing is getting better and, more importantly, organizations are starting to proactively manage much of their discoverable information (though not enough for my liking). How fast we go from $2,000 per GB for processing to less than $5 per GB remains to be seen. That debate, frankly, takes us away from the more important issues to be solve. Why? Because everyone is focused on the ability to collect and find legacy information that is traditionally unmanaged. What the focus should be on is proactively managing this information. That’s right - setting retention policies, getting rid of non-necessary content; these types of actions are what will eventually lead to the elimination of processing fees. But, the legacy data messes that exist within organizations will keep processing vendors busy for quite some time.

I’ve been involved in several recent debates about whether organizations should do whatever it takes to allow workers to create and share information assets or whether strict limitations should be put on information usage. Theoretically (especially in an information-driven economy), organizations should strive to provide an infrastructure that allows users to easily create, find, share, collaborate on, publish, and transact information. That’s the theory behind what Forrester Research calls the “Information Workplace.”

It’s always exciting to be part of bringing something new and valuable to market. When I tell my friends about Mimosa’s new File System Archiving (FSA) offering, they tend to roll their eyes and yawn. But, none of my friends are IT Operations folks dealing with soaring storage costs and overflowing file systems; and, none of them are legal or compliance officers worried about finding and reviewing the terabytes of data that sit out on file shares.