Archive for the ‘Email Archiving’ Category

As expected the archiving functionality in Exchange 2010 created quite a bit of a buzz with people and most have been wondering how in reality the archiving functionality stacks up against traditional archiving products like Mimosa NearPoint.   Microsoft positions Exchange 2010 archiving at the moment as a Personal Archive and suggests customers who have a strict need for compliance to look at business archiving solutions under which they classify Mimosa NearPoint which offers besides email archiving, advanced eDiscovery, File System Archiving and SharePoint Archiving.

Exchange Storage management was what triggered the rapid uprise in email archiving tools in the beginning of the 2000.  It was primarily caused by the limited end user mailbox sizes that was caused by the limitations in storage, software and overall cost associated with it.  In the years after, organizations embraced stubbing as a means to clean out end users mailboxes in an attempt to keep storage costs in control.

First of all, many of you are wondering what RBS is.  Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) is an API that is available as an add-on feature pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express.  It is designed to actually move the storage of binary large objects (BLOBs) from costly storage on database servers to cheaper storage solutions and is also available as  such for SharePoint Portal Server.  The advantages of RBS are that it can save you a significant amount of storage space, conserves hardware resources and allows the end user transparent access to their data.

Two months ago Mimosa Systems announced that it further integrated with NetApp’s storage and data management solutions.  This was an important announcement as Mimosa NearPoint is actually the only archiving product that offers multiple methods to ingest data for archiving from Exchange.  Not only logshipping, but Journaling and now shadowless archiving.

If you are considering Exchange 2010 for archiving, instead of a 3^rd-party solution, be careful to consider two important requirements that can increase the cost and delay implementation.  First, you should be aware that the new archiving features of Exchange 2010 require enterprise CALs.  If you are not already using enterprise CALs, then you must pay the additional cost to upgrade.   

I recommend that you attend this Ferris webinar on Nov4th to learn about the new Exchange 2010 features for archiving.  http://www.ferris.com/2009/11/04/exchange-2010-archiving-the-analyst%e2%80%99s-point-of-view-2/

Archiving is an important new capability for managing Exchange and email in general and the new Exchange 2010 promises to have all the features you need – or not!

Ferris has accused Microsoft of over selling the Exchange 2010 archiving features in this blog  http://www.ferris.com/2009/11/02/microsoft-oversells-e2010-archiving/  so it is critical to learn what the real story is.

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

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.

This is a question that has been asked many times.During an upgrade to Exchange 2007 or even Exchange 2010 in the future, all mailbox data within the legacy Exchange 2003 Server would typically be migrated into the new Exchange 2007 Server. Since a migration will copy old, infrequently accessed, or fixed/static email data, it may be a time consuming and inefficient process depending on the volume of inactive data. The excessive bulk of this data will also impact performance and capacity on the new servers, and increase backup and restore times.