Archive for October, 2009

OK .. so Exchange 2010 will be  available to the general public coming November 9th and as I mentioned in an earlier post it is the archiving capabilities that a lot of people are looking at.  I’ve spend now quite some time to look over the functionality and am going to write a set of posts with items that you need to be aware of. Today I’d like to bring retention to your attention.  Retention in Exchange Server 2010 is accomplished with multiple retention options.  These policies can then be configured with actions on how to maintain and move data from the primary mailbox to the archive:

Last week I spoke at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference on records management and eDiscovery. I will make my deck that I used available later this week, however while I was at Las Vegas one of the whitepapers that I worked on was made available on the Mimosa Website. You can actually download the whitepaper on this link.

Le mois dernier j’ai participé à une journée de réunions techniques chez un de nos partenaires constructeur. Autour de la table, une quinzaine d’avant ventes, fatigués par les présentations qui s’enchaînaient, et abattus par l’idée que je n’étais que leur avant dernier interlocuteur de la journée. Il était 15h, il faisait chaud, et après deux minutes sur la société Mimosa j’enchaînais avec les enjeux autour de l’archivage. Ils se sont alors réveillés et les questions ont commencé à fuser. Qu’est ce qu’il faut archiver, quelle est la loi qui oblige les entreprise à archiver, qui est soumis à Sarbanes Oxley, à la loi de sécurité financière, Norme Française Z42-013, etc. L’archivage est un sujet brûlant aujourd’hui chez la majorité de leurs clients, créant beaucoup de questions, de confusion sur le type d’archivage et sur le rôle de chacun. Tout le monde veut aller dans cette direction, mais sans réellement savoir pourquoi, avec le risque qu’une frustration ne ressorte de ces échanges car personne ne peut dire aujourd’hui en France qu’il est par défaut obligatoire d’archiver, chaque cas étant différent.

I liked this recent blog from Christine Taylor for two reasons. First it reminds us of the very important case Testa vs. Walmart that underscores the importance of good retention policy and legal holds for critical company information. Second it plugs the excellent book by my colleague Bill Tolson on eDiscovery. Take a look.
Link: http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-protection/when-it-comes-to-ediscovery-even-walmart-can-get-it-wrong.php

Corporate records retention policies for many companies are afterthoughts with little understanding of how the company truly uses its documents/records/ESI. In my experience, many companies leave the decision of whether to keep records and for how long to their employees. This strategy is dangerous and costly when litigation is potentially possible. Allowing your employees total control over records and ESI drives the cost of eDiscovery up because you greatly multiple the number of possible storage ares you must check for responsive records. It also increases the risk of spoliation when a litigation hold is required.

Last week I was notified by Microsoft that I was awarded the MVP Award for Microsoft Exchange. This makes it the 10th year in a row that I was awarded this for Exchange Server and there are only around 100 or so around the world for this particular product.

Microsoft states the following on MVPs:

With great pleasure I am able to announce that Mimosa NearPoint will support Exchange 2010 when it becomes available for the public later this year.   In 2005, Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange incorporated an innovative data capture method called Continuous Application Shadowing™. Continuous Application Shadowing creates either a local, or remote copy of a given Exchange database and logs. Subsequently, all email content is extracted, indexed and single-instanced into the NearPoint archive. Continuous Application Shadowing captures complete Exchange mailbox information including the new the Exchange 2010 Online Archive. PST files and all email content found in public and managed folders can also be archived — a major advantage for eDiscovery. NearPoint also supports capture from Exchange 2010 through MAPI, and is planning support for Exchange Web Services.

A growing number of businesses use Twitter for advertising. If you were not aware of this new trend, you can read about it in this recent article in the Wall Street Journal. [link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125435764583454651.html]

It is very easy to sign up for a Twitter account and it costs nothing. Each post has a maximum of 140 characters, so the message is very brief. To find a person or brand name to follow, simply search for the name and then click the “follow” button.

Thomas Allman recently publish an article titled: State E-Discovery Rulemaking after the 2006 Federal Amendments: An Update. In it Tom points out that 23 states have adopted statewide e-discovery procedural rules which mirror or reflect the 2006 E-Discovery Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.