Recently I read an entry on Informationweek titled, "The Value of a Storage Administrator," by George Crump. He wrote this article to express his own opinion on storage management amidst the deafening buzz around virtualization. Software and hardware providers are rolling out new features to make the storage management process simpler, but his problem with all these new options is that there will still have to be a key individual focusing on managing it all. According to George, the only way a business wouldn't need a storage manager would be with the existence of intelligent and automated storage. Now the idea of storage intelligence and automation sounds appealing, 
but in the end, until we move into the era of artificial intelligence and flying cars, pure storage automation isn't happening. That being the case, all storage options will absolutely need some sort of storage manager to do maintenance and troubleshooting.
However, there is another option that will significantly reduce IT burdens while you wait for the future to come around; outsourcing data management using a hosted cloud based service. Instead of wasting your own resources on a storage manager, when you outsource email management to hosted provider all the data management is taken care of by a third party. You may feel that this is a violation of privacy, but all these companies (like Sonian) do is migrate your information into the archive and store it for you. After that you, and others authorized at your company, are the only ones who can access that data. No longer would you face the threat of data overloading your infrastructure or using valuable IT resources to continually address and manage your storage needs. All you would need is a liaison to become accustomed to an archive service and all of a sudden you stop wasting time with email storage pains.
My personal (biased) opinion: I think a hosted archiving solution is a lot more productive than driving yourself mad trying to manage the endless amounts of data, waiting and hoping someone rolls out an AI to take over your job. Besides, we've all seen the sci-fi movies, we don't need HAL 9000 putting us out of work.
With industry noise about email archiving, and hosted archiving in general, getting louder and louder, it can be difficult to find all the information you need to make a decision. To help you easily gather information, Sonian compiles relevant content together for you in the Cloud Archiving Monthly Market Update.
The Sonian Cloud Archiving Market Update:
Zurich Insurance fined £2.27m for loss of customer data.
How could the Cloud have helped?
At Sonian we love that it is a busy and exciting time in the cloud computing and data archiving industries. Cloud powered hosted solutions are changing the game for individuals, businesses and entire industries. This entire post could be about the way cloud computing can revolutionize the music and movie industries or the way it will continue to shape B2B commerce. However, the news of a massive mishap for one company in Europe is the focus today. The situation at the UK division of Zurich Insurance serves as a not-so-subtle reminder to discuss the importance of business data storage, security and systems.
Zurich Insurance will reportedly be fined, by the Financial Services Authority, £2.27m for the loss of detailed personal data of over 46,000 customers, marking the largest fine ever levied on a firm concerning data security. The data, on an unencrypted back-up tape, was lost during a scheduled transfer to a storage center in South Africa. “Zurich UK failed to take reasonable care to ensure it had effective systems and controls to manage the risks relating to the security of customer data…” said an FSA statement.
FSA Director of Enforcement Margaret Cole noted, “Firms across the financial sector would do well to look at the details of this case.” Any company in every sector would do well to know the details of this case, as we at Sonian understand. Cloud powered data systems, as is often the case, could have simplified Zurich UK’s data systems and security, potentially saving the company at least £2.27m. This story illustrates the importance of paying particular attention to the systems and security of business data management.
While news of a financial levy for data mismanagement may not be the most exciting news out there, it does stand as an example for those who follow: backup your data in the cloud, and reduce the risk of physical data loss.
Webinar on Cloud Security hosted by Steve Riley, Cloud Computing Strategist for Amazon Web Services, and Greg Arnette, Founder and CTO of Sonian
Recently, Beloit College released its annual Mindset List. This list looks at the “cultural touchstones” that define the incoming class of college freshman, with this year looking at the incoming class of 2014. For the class of 2014, "Czechoslovakia has never existed (#32), Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry (#12), and most notably, “Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail (#2).”
As you can see, the list has received a good amount of commentary across all types of publications. One of the biggest questions is, what happens in 4-5 years when the class of 2014 joins the workforce? This list subtly doubles as a kind of map to the changing face of communications.
This class "never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone," because personal cell phones have become common place. As older generations have watched from the fringes at the slow extinction of the land line, cell phones simultaneously made email obsolete, because now text-hungry teens could electronically communicate with their closest friends instantly, and the receiving party didn't have to be staring at their email inbox in order to respond. Not only that, but text messages are almost always from trusted sources, while email inboxes can become cluttered with spam. In addition, today's youngest generations use social networks like Facebook and Twitter where they can choose exactly who and what they listen to.
For the class of 2014, "Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive (#27)," but for most people, we hardly ever even use a CD-ROM drive anymore. The advances in technology, the material available for download online, and now the advent of cloud computing and virtualization will have made CD-ROM disk drives obsolete. The Mindset List for the Class of 2033 will read: "Computers never even had a CD-ROM disk drive." Will it also read, "For the class of 2033, there are no email addresses... only Twitter handles?"
It’s doubtful. Email still remains the communication channel of choice for business communication. Though the class of 2014 prefers the instant access they receive from IMing, texting and social media, it’s unlikely the need for safe, searchable business communication will ever go away. A more likely scenario—businesses will need to work with their employees to ensure all kinds of communication are safe, from email to Tweets and Facebook messages, to instant messages across a variety of platforms. In the event of legal or eDiscovery queries, it will be more important than ever for businesses of all kinds to have their bases covered.
However future generations choose to communicate, companies are luckily able to archive and search all different types of business communication, making the integration of different generations and business practices seamless and easy.
Download the Social Media & IM Archiving Webinar.
Learn the ins and outs of this exciting new technology.
You may not know it, but the bill H.R. 4115 poses a serious threat to businesses unprepared for litigation and business e-discovery. Simply put H.R. 4115 is a bill that will reduce the number of motions to dismiss because it forbids courts to dismiss complaints until it can be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the plaintiff has no facts to back their claim regardless of how much evidence they have at the time they make the claim. Basically a plaintiff could come forward with some absurd conspiracy theory but a court would be required to see through the extensive litigation, e-discovery, and investigation until it the plaintiff was proven wrong.
Because of this bill, even if the plaintiff has no evidence or fact to back their claim, for every case the party in question must engage in an expensive and tumultuous e-discovery process. Due to the lack of efficient e-discovery methods this process can cost companies millions of dollars in a single case. These towering e-discovery costs have forced companies to turn to settlement before the process even begins. This shows that, regardless of the validity of the claim, the ediscovery could cost more than the settlement. This opens windows of opportunity for manipulation; plaintiffs could use pure theory to force an e-discovery proccess that could, simply out of luck, find evidence they didn't know existed, or they could even use the threat of an e-discovery process as a form of initimidation to force a settlement. If this bill is passed, every case brought before a court could subject companies to massive e-discovery or settlement costs.
In an interview with David Lender in the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel he stated "The concern about e-discovery costs is compounded by the fact that those costs are frequently incurred under circumstances where clients feel they did nothing wrong, yet they face multiple millions of dollars of potential discovery costs." In the same interview he also revealed that cases today are being forced to settlements after daunting e-discovery processes became part of the equation. In fact, there are less and less actual trials due to the costs of litigation, a lot of which SHOULD be decided by a court and jury -- yet the expenses make it nearly impossible to come out of that situation without significant losses.
Lender said in the same interview, "we need to get control over the e-discovery process by changing the mindset to a focus on discovering the core documents, and not everything under the sun. Until we do this, there will be fewer trials because the cost of e-discovery is overwhelming the incentive to try cases." If H.R. 4115. is passed, e-discovery and case settlement will become even more dangerous to businesses than they are today. Yet not all hope is lost, you can prepare for the risk of an expensive ediscovery process by using the right e-discovery solution. Even if H.R. 4115. isn't passed, improper e-discovery is a serious threat to your business, but if you're prepared, litigation won't be nearly as threatening as you think.
Download the Free White Paper: Why Use Cloud-Powered Hosted Email Archiving, In it, you will find the answers to: Why you should archive your content? Why hosted archiving makes sense? and What are the key issues to consider in selecting a vendor?
According to Jeffrey Fehrman at his blog EDD blog online there has been more development in the Toyota litigation process. The judge of the multi-district litigation (MDL) process approved a joint discovery agreement in order to avoid disagreements in available evidence. This agreement allows Toyota's lawyers to investigate the vehicle while allowing plaintiffs' attorneys to depose executives about the faulty throttle. This is what Toyota had to say in a prepared statement.
"We are pleased that the court has approved the agreement we reached with plaintiffs' counsel that establishes an equitable discovery process for this complex litigation. Toyota looks forward to defending this case, and we are confident that reliable scientific evidence will demonstrate the safety of our vehicles."
After the 8 million car recalls, there are over 200 lawsuits against Toyota in this MDL. Most of the lawsuits involve the financial losses involving the recall of the vehicle. The remainders are for bodily harm and deaths caused by these faulty accelerator pedals.
To explain their own side of the story and the reasons behind the pedals malfunctioning they issued this statement:
"Toyota's own vehicle evaluations have confirmed that the remedies it developed for sticking accelerator pedal and potential accelerator pedal entrapment by an unsecured or incompatible floor mat are effective. We have also determined a number of other reasons for customer concerns about unintended acceleration, including cases where an increase in engine speed is normal, such as engine idle up, as well as pedal misapplication. In no case have we found electronic throttle controls to be a cause."
Read more about eDiscovery.
I joined Sonian in July of 2010. While I have been working in the technology industry for nearly ten years, I am a relative newbie in the archiving world, so I have spent the past month ramping up on the space. With the hope of helping other newbies get their footing, I summarize some of my initial observations below.
These notes are written from a vendor's perspective and are based on my research and conversations with coworkers, analysts, litigators, compliance personnel, and, most importantly, Sonian's customers and partners. Just as I benefited from each of their perspectives, I hope you benefit from mine, and I would love to hear yours.
Big Market
In terms of revenue, industry analysts seem to be honing in on a total email archiving market size between $1B and $2.5B for 2010, expanding to be as large as $5B by 2014. For reference, this is about 25% larger than the much-hyped managed security services market and nearly twice the size of the identity management market. Conservatively, we estimate that there are at least twenty million archiving users today, and that there will be more than one hundred million by 2014. Incredibly, one hundred million archiving users would still represent a mere ten percent of the one billion corporate mailboxes projected to be in existence in 2014.
Growth in the email archiving market is fueled by a number of drivers, including regulatory compliance (FINRA, HIPAA, FRCP, SOX, etc.), litigation support (where organizations turn to digital archives to make the discovery process more efficient), and storage management (where we use archives as a way to offload seldom-accessed data to inexpensive storage). These are all becoming more significant over time--more regulations, more litigation, and more data. Accordingly, customers looking for archiving solutions will have no shortage of options. In fact, a Google search for "Email Archiving" returns over 800,000 results, including listings from global technology providers such as IBM and HP, hosting providers such as Rackspace and BlueTie, and, of course, archiving service providers such as Sonian.
Evolving Delivery Models
While other models exist (including hybrid, appliance-based, etc.), most popular archiving offerings fall in one of the following categories:
Legacy "On Premise" Archiving
Under the legacy archiving model, customers physically install, configure, and operate archiving systems within their corporate data centers. This model provides customers with physical control of their archived data. Many of these offerings are also very mature and boast the vast feature sets that are required to meet the stringent demands and internal policies of the world's largest enterprises. The up-front costs for on-premise archiving are high, requiring investments in hardware, software, and storage as well as ongoing operations and support.
Hosted Archiving
In the hosted model, archiving systems are physically located within vendor data centers and accessed by customers via the web. Customers are not required to install or operate hardware, software, or storage directly, so this model is generally less costly and complex for customers than legacy on-premise systems. Unfortunately, the burden of managing complex infrastructure is shifted from customers to archiving vendors. While the vendors benefit from some economies of scale (by managing hundreds or thousands of customers at a time), they have to price high enough to offset capital-intensive operating models, and infrastructure management complexity can impede focus, innovation, and flexibility. The lack of physical control over the archiving systems is an area of concern for some customers. Leading hosted offerings boast rich feature sets and security controls to comply with key regulatory requirements.
Cloud-Powered Archiving
Cloud-powered archiving services represent a dramatic departure from traditional hosted models in that they were built from the ground-up to take advantage of the unique capabilities enabled by cloud computing technologies such as Amazon EC2 and S3. Under this model, as with the hosted model, archiving is delivered as a service. Customers typically pay a low per-user fee per month and are not required to install or operate on-premise archiving infrastructure. Unlike first-generation archiving vendors, however, cloud-powered archiving vendors are not constrained by physical infrastructure--opting instead to tap into networking, storage, and compute power on-demand from external cloud computing providers. This enables archiving vendors (and their customers) to benefit from the scale and elasticity of the cloud--most often in the form of improved performance, dramatically lower prices, and fewer restrictions (i.e. unlimited storage). Vendors of cloud-powered archiving services also argue that offloading the burden of managing physical infrastructure enables them to focus their efforts on high-value innovations.
Two roads diverged in a wood...
Most analysts and archiving providers seem to believe that the archive of the future will be integrated--but there are different perspectives on the type of integration that will occur. One perspective is that archiving will be absorbed into the email ecosystem (alongside hosting, security, ant-spam, etc.) for customers to purchase as part of a bundle of "email management" services from vendors that specialize in this area. We can see the parallels between this line of thinking, Google’s acquisition of Postini in 2007 and, more recently, Microsoft's decision to launch Exchange 2010 "native" archiving.
Conversely, those with a data-centric view of the world tend to believe that customers will look to best-of-breed archiving providers to integrate various data types, including email, files, instant messages, and social media to form a single information archive. Gartner refers to this model as "Enterprise Information Archiving" (EIA) and went so far as to retire email archiving as a distinct segment earlier this year.
Delivery models, integration, and the future
This is not a one-size-fits-all market, and we expect that various archiving models will coexist for the foreseeable future. Legacy on-premise providers control the lion's share of the installed base today and are deeply entrenched in large enterprise accounts. However, analysts and anecdotal evidence suggest that the popularity of this model is waning--particularly as SaaS offerings gain broad acceptance and feature parity. Accordingly, the traditional "hosted" model is gaining momentum today, but vendors in this space will be challenged to achieve the massive scale and innovation required to compete against low-cost entrants that leverage cloud computing infrastructure to deliver improved performance at a lower cost. Finally, upstart cloud-powered providers have an inherent advantage along the cost and focus dimensions but face the challenge of getting noticed in a very crowded room.
From an integration perspective, it is far from certain that either the "email management" or the "integrated information archive" model will dominate in the end. Many customers see value in procuring their email services from a single vendor, and will continue to do so provided that the archiving and discovery conversation continues to revolve around email. On the other hand, the growing popularity of social media and instant messaging for business communications (and the compliance implications of the same) tends to support the notion that these data types need to be put on equal footing with email for archiving, retention, and retrieval. The integrated archive would be a logical way to achieve this, and it also aligns more directly with trends in enterprise search, eDiscovery, analytics, and reporting based on user-generated data.
…….
Well, that’s my take after 30 days on the job. The only thing that is clear to me thus far is that the future is far from certain in the space, and that Sonian and its partners have a great opportunity to shape that future. I would certainly welcome your thoughts and feedback—let’s compare notes!
Healthcare IT - According to Spy Glass Consulting,
94% of doctors are using their smart phones for business communication via SMS and email. This puts hospitals in a difficult situation because they don't have the resources to automatically archive and retain these messages as they are sent from these mobile devices. As a result, physicians must manually upload their data to the storage service or archive. Not only is this an inefficient use of doctors' time, but manual archiving runs a severe
risk of not fully complying with HIPAA regulations. This can subject a hospital to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Without the right solution, the uploaded data can easily be deleted or lost if not archived and indexed properly. Spy Glass reported that "critical communications easily fall through the cracks." So to answer my question, "does texting without archiving qualify as medical malpractice?" I'd say yes, because according to this report, one of the easiest ways a doctor can put his hospital at risk, is to communicate through their smart phone with no archiving! My money was on shoddy brain surgery.
Download the Social Media, IM, and SMS Archiving Webinar.
Learn more about archiving technology for text messaging, instant messaging, and social media.
On July 26, in the National Public Radio segment called "All Techs Considered," the topic of discussion was about the migration of email and critical business communications to the cloud. Some major points covered in this segment include:
This broadcast goes into much more detail about where the issues lay, why LA is struggling with this migration, and if companies are prepared to hand over security responsibility to a third party service provider. If you want to listen to the broadcast you can access it here.
Webinar on Cloud Security hosted by Steve Riley, Cloud Computing Strategist for Amazon Web Services, and Greg Arnette, Founder and CTO of Sonian
Exchange 2010 Archiving comes with many benefits, less need for PST files, improved retention over Exchange 2007, and basic e-discovery features... But does Exchange 2010 Archiving replace the need for third party archiving software?
After review, Exchange 2010 archiving won't be able to replace third party systems, but it will be able to coexist. Third party archives can be more complimentary than competitive with Exchange's archiving tool set.
For example, when addressing compliance issues, the backend rules governing Exchange's "Move to Archive" and "Keep for" holds are inadequate for many compliance policies. In theory, IT can impose "Move to Archive" and "Keep for" policies by delineating archive and retention guidelines. In actuallity, those guidelines are just that - guidelines - and end users often have the ability to institute their own policies that define what they archive and how long to retain these documents in the archive.
This isn't acceptable for many regulations. Insert third party archiving solution here. With a third party archiving application, IT can act as a centralized compliance staff that can adequetly define and enforce archiving and retention policies so that investigators and auditors can have confidence when searching through the archive. In addition, many third party archivers can cover a broader range of digitally stored information, not just email. SharePoint, IM, Social Media, and SMS (texts) Archiving are all important when meeting compliance regulations.
Also, because the Exchange 2010 mailbox is under user control, users can edit or delete content until a legal hold is placed on the mailbox. In this instance, a third party application can better enforce content archiving, thus ensuring a more complete e-discovery process.
Not only this, but most third party archiving solutions include better tools to support e-discovery searches - tools that allow for greater granularity in searches that can be definable across multiple mailboxes.
Lastly, in Exchange 2010, users can archive PSTs, but the files must be ingested manually. This leaves room for user error - users can miss a PST, not know how to archive the PST, not know that they are required to archive certain files, or just simply not perform the ingestion. Third party archivers often have PST crawlers or other tools that will automatically find and ingest PST files into the archive. This will ensure that all relevant material is on hand to meet retention policy and ensure a hiccup-free e-discovery process.
Download the webinar to see how cloud powered archiving is changing the email archiving market.