• @silly-wall-street. There has been much to do about the HP / Dell / 3Par love triangle. An interesting stat: according to Yahoo finance as of the market close today, the 52 change in stock price of Isilon (296%) is bigger than 3Par’s (274%), yet Isilon’s trailing twelve month revenue is $50M less than 3Par’s.
• @marketing-matters. Speaking of the storage love triangle that just ended, this is a good read as to why corporate messaging in technology has a material impact.
• @cloud-made-real. The whole hype around cloud-based IT is the ability for real-time, utility computing. If anyone wants to actually make money at this, they will need to be able to bill for all of the compute services they offer. This is why Zuora, not VMware, may be the glue to the cloud economy.
• @guest-blog-appearance. Its not as glamorous as a guest appearance on late night TV, but I did share some thoughts on why IT needs to think a bit differently about information management here.

Read more of Brian’s blog entries at IT BULLETins.

Overview

Over two-thirds of organizations recently surveyed by ESG said that IT was the primary group responsible for collecting messages and attachments after an electronic discovery request involving e-mail is received (see Figure 1).[1] With e-mail being an extremely popular source of evidence, it is readily apparent that more and more IT departments will pick up yet another responsibility when it comes to managing this vital communication application.

Supporting electronic discovery collections is commonly viewed as just another administrative task that IT staff must perform because they “own” and are most familiar with the technology. In fact, many IT departments do not necessarily know that they are actually involved in the electronic discovery process; they are simply following orders given by in-house counsel.  As such, they do not specifically evaluate any type of e-mail management solution to solve an “electronic discovery” problem. IT does, however, seek out message management solutions that reduce the overall e-mail administration burden because the application must be given the “most attention” as its exposure (everyone uses and relies on e-mail) is extremely high. When e-mail goes down, everyone in the company is impacted. If an executive loses a message, the proverbial IT “fire drill” ensues. And, with 40% of organizations experiencing greater than 20% e-mail capacity growth, message-related storage costs continue to grow. The list continues.

The Vicious E-mail Management Circle

Dealing with electronic discovery-related tasks may be the worst e-mail administrative duty for IT because:

• The events, scopes of requests, and timelines are unpredictable. It is very hard to know when a regulator or litigant is going to request e-mails as part of discovery.  There is no telling what parameters will guide a specific request; some discovery notices call out specific people (custodians), date ranges, keywords, or a combination thereof.  And, more often than not, in-house attorneys want the collections completed as soon as possible so they can start reviewing the information.
• There is more to do than just finding the messages. IT has to worry about things like “chain of custody” where collection processes have to be documented to prove that information has not been tampered with or deleted. There is also a possibility that an IT manager or someone supervising the collections may have to “testify” in a deposition or in court as to how they actually executed the operation.
• E-mail can be everywhere. There are several different locations where relevant messages have to be collected (see Figure 2) and the data may be in different formats.  Searches for messages are likely going to have to be run several times as no data source can be excluded (unless agreed upon by both parties’ attorneys or dictated by the court) or it might look like the company is trying to hide something.

IT can only control the third issue outlined above and most of the time they make it worse rather than better. According to ESG research, 80% of organizations implement e-mail quotas, which are storage thresholds based on the size of a mailbox.  This is done to control e-mail related storage costs and the burdens associated with moving large mailboxes around when storage capacity starts to run out. Smaller inboxes also reduce the risk of storage-related performance issues, which can slow the primary e-mail application’s response time. Keeping mailboxes small also makes it easier to complete backups quicker.

While quotas appear to reduce some e-mail administrative headaches, they actually make electronic discovery processes more difficult. Quotas often force employees to start setting up personal archives (.PST or .NSF files), moving old messages out of their inboxes to avoid triggering quotas. These archives are stored on PCs and file shares and are frequently backed up—even if an employee may delete a personal archive folder, it is likely to be on a backup system somewhere. Nearly half of the organizations surveyed by ESG stored over 2 TB of personal archive message data. The personal archives could be anywhere, which means when a discovery request arrives, IT has to search for messages in several repositories.

Purpose-built E-mail Archiving Alleviates the Burden

Some IT departments hear the phrase “e-mail archiving” and immediately think about messages stored on backup tapes, which does not really make electronic discovery-related work much easier. Archiving e-mails via purpose-built solutions deliver far better results.  Purpose-built archive solutions—delivered as an on-premises application, an appliance, or via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)—copy or move messages based on predetermined policies from the primary messaging application into a separate “archive” environment.  Employees can still access the archived messages via a native e-mail application client (Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc.) plug-in or a standard Web browser.

With a purpose-built archive solution, IT can still use quotas; however, when a threshold is reached, messages are moved into the archive. IT controls message-related storage costs by deploying the archive environment on a lower cost storage system (when compared to the storage that supports the primary e-mail application environment) or leveraging a SaaS-based offering where e-mails are actually archived with a service provider. The primary messaging application remains within a predefined capacity range, reducing the risk of performance issues and facilitating faster backups.

IT can use quota-based policies or other rules based on age, size, sender, etc. of e-mails to trigger an archive operation.  Regardless of how archiving is actually performed, the biggest benefit is that employees do not need to create personal archive folders to save older or large messages.  In fact, many IT departments disable the personal archive capabilities within a primary messaging application after setting up a purpose-built e-mail archive solution. Others also choose to migrate existing personal archive folders in the purpose-built e-mail archive solution, thereby eliminating these dispersed messages altogether. When it comes time to search for and retrieve messages, they are either in the primary e-mail application or in the archive. With some purpose-built archive solutions having other capabilities such as “search within search results,” search tracking and reporting, legal hold retention management, and others that aid in the electronic discovery collection and initial review processes, IT can complete the tasks much quicker and with fewer resources.

The Bigger Truth

Forty-percent of organizations using a purpose-built archive solution cited “fewer IT staff hours required for e-mail administration” as a key metric to justify their investment.  Most IT departments include fewer help desk calls related to e-mail performance, streamlined backup operations, and minimal storage management operations as part of this calculation.  ESG believes that the 40% figure would likely increase if IT actually thought how about much simpler electronic discovery tasks are when there are fewer places to search for e-mails.

via HP, IBM and Intel: Scouting Returns in Strange Sectors – TheStreet.

For in-house counsel, the Gibson Dunn updates are a very quick read, so you know what is going on in the industry. More specifically, when you meet with external counsel and they start talking about things like preserving Instant Messages, you do not look at them like Gary Coleman did Todd Bridges in many “Diff’rent Strokes,” offering a resounding “Whatchoo you taking about Willis?” It may also help you understand where technology investments may actually pay off.

For electronic discovery technology solution vendors, I highly recommend reading these updates as everyone is using “fear factor” marketing: e.g., “if you do not buy my gadget, the court will fine you.” Yes, there have been fines and even adverse inferences. It is a good idea to know the circumstances that led to these penalties so you sound somewhat credible to a well-informed in-house or outside counsel (0therwise, there is the risk of sounding like Lindsay Lohan trying to explain why she thought reporting to a court date was voluntary).

Today’s bullets are the major section titles from Gibson Dunn’s 2010 Mid-Year Report:

2010 Mid-Year Trends in:

• Sanctions
• Preservation
• Search Methodology
• Cooperation
• Proportionality
• Privilege Waiver
• Employer/Employee Data Privacy
• Cross-Border and International Discovery
• Government E-Discovery Responsibilities

Read more of Brian’s blog entries at IT BULLETins.

• Most corporate counsel and advising attorneys (who work at law firms) that I have spoken to have never heard of “ECA.” From what I gather, most are familiar with a process called an initial case assessment where a meeting between a corporate and outside counsel actually review the merits of a claim/request, determine a plan, formulate a high level budget, and assign tasks. The good news is ECA and ICA still share the “C” and the “A”.
• Either before or right after the initial case assessment, details regarding electronic discovery activities need to be gathered. This usually entails how much data is likely involved, potential processing and review costs, and what to ask the opposing party for, amongst others. This information does not necessarily require an attorney to actually look at every file that could be relevant–it does require the ability to identify where the ESI is, how much of it there really is, and insight into how a review will be completed. This all helps feed a case risk equation and budget.
• In parallel, there needs to be preservation including notifying the right custodians their data is being put on hold to actually electronically enforcing that hold in place. There have been numerous opinions and sanctions regarding companies failing to properly conform to their “duty to preserve” requirements.
• Some attorneys may not want to look at the ESI at all until they know how much it will actually cost. Others may be chomping at the bit to start reading e-mails because there aren’t that many pertaining to the matter. In either scenario, attorneys want to assess what they are getting into before they actually dive in.
• Assessments provide information and information is the foundation for arguments. Attorneys like arguing; they don’t like looking at 200,000 documents.

Part of this is the attorneys’ fault. They should demand from vendors more data to complete assessments: number of custodians, potential adversaries to depose, key time periods, time/cost to review ESI, etc. If a vendor cannot provide this, it does not matter how early they can provide anything else.

Read more of Brian’s blog entries at IT BULLETins.

via StoredIQ releases version 6.0 – FierceContentManagement.

ESG has been saying that primary data reduction would come to a storage environment near you.  We even pointed at NetApp as proof.  The response was “one vendor does not make a trend.”  EMC talked about it quietly, but no one gave them any credit.  So, let’s say it again.  “Data reduction is coming to PRIMARY storage ; Data reduction is coming to PRIMARY storage.”  Dell now owns Ocarina and IBM bought up compression-technology leader StoreWize.   Someone will be smart enough to own / partner with Permabit soon.   We have three concrete examples and more likely on the way.  Convinced?  One big bullet from a musket in honor of Mr. Revere:

• Storage solution vendors are going to try and help you save less data.   Please listen to us this time and try it.   It will save you money.  If not, ESG may have to stop blogging and tweeting and buy a horse.

Read Brian’s other blog entries at IT BULLETins.

via eChannelLine USA – IBM buys data-compression vendor Storwize.

In general, ESG defines digital archiving as:

“The long-term retention and management of electronic information that has been purposefully retained to satisfy records management, data management, regulatory compliance, or litigation support requirements.  Archived information differs from backup data in that backup data is typically a temporary copy of a data set that is ultimately overwritten, while archived information is moved—not copied—from one system to another and is often a permanent copy of a record or data set that is stored without alteration or deletion for a specified period of time.”

In other words, this forecast counts those historical digital assets that have been moved and/or retained to satisfy records management, data management (e.g., removing inactive or infrequently-accessed data from production systems, improving end-users’ access to information, etc.), regulatory compliance, or litigation support requirements as “digital archive capacity.”

ESG is continuing a line of ongoing digital archiving research that began in 2002. As with previous research reports on this topic (such Reference Information, Compliance, Digital Archiving End-User Survey & Market Forecast 2006-2010, and the 2007 Digital Archiving Report series), this market forecast does not identify or distinguish between competing methods of retaining and managing archived information.  Rather, this forecast encompasses the activities of those organizations that have deployed e-mail archiving applications as well as those that may be using other methods to retain e-mail for business, legal, or regulatory purposes.  In other words, one way to look at this forecast is as the total addressable market (from a capacity perspective) for the various digital archiving tools and methods available today.  ESG does, however, build in the increasing adoption of newer, specialized digital archiving applications for e-mail, database, or file-based content.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Digital Archive Market Forecast 2010-2015 Executive Summary

• Xyratex must be wondering what it has to do to raise its stock price.  The company reported its fiscal q2 earnings yesterday which included beating street top and bottom line estimates and in-line guidance.  The stock traded 12% to the downside the following day–so much for being rewarded for execution.
• Speaking of Xyratex, one of its largest customers, NetApp, held its industry analyst event last week out in the valley.  One of the bigger takeaways was management’s focus on taking advantage of a unique opportunity in the IT marketplace–specifically, the built-up demand for new solutions given aging environments that were not refreshed in 2009; the pressure on IT to compete from a services and responsive perspective with outsourcing (i.e., cloud) alternatives becoming more attractive; and the shift to virtualized / shared / private cloud infrastructures.  Using a sports analogy, the management team is like the Lakers coaching squad–they know that opportunities like having Kobe in his prime, Gasol, Bynum, et al, are not going to last forever so it’s important to be at your best when the stars align.
• In case you missed it, the enterprise search market received substantial validation when Exalead was acquired by Dassault Systèmes at the beginning of June.  Given Dassult’s expertise in building vertically focused software solutions, one has to assume it will expand Exalead’s development efforts in Search Based Application (SBA) offerings.  We all use search technology every day and I foresee this technology being at the forefront of next generation enterprise applications the way that GPS capabilities are currently a key component of many consumer apps.  Watch Attivio in this SBA space.  Dassault admitted that it took a look at this offering before buying something closer to home (literally).
• The best part about being an analyst (at least for me–I’ve been at it for 8+ years) is seeing something you have never seen before.   There are a ton of electronic discovery solutions in the marketplace that enable companies to locate relevant data quicker.  I have come to realize that, depending on the case, corporate counsel need more data about data that could be problematic.  In other words, they want ammunition to argue about what to look for before they actually have to look.  Enter Renew Data’s Anagram solution which helps companies understand what keywords exist and how to defensibly select ones with an auditable methodology rather than random guessing.  I am also a fan of StoredIQ’s offering because it provides corporate counsel metrics such as how much data meets certain criteria (custodian, keyword, etc) and what the potential review costs are for this ESI before it is sent to a legal service provider.
• Speaking of insight, EMC added File Intelligence to its SourceOne family.  To put it simply, if you want to leverage investments in content management, archiving, tiered storage, encryption, and electronic records management systems, they can use SourceOne File Intelligence to analyze file shares to see what content belongs in these solutions.  It’s a great way to gain control over some of the unwieldy file shares.
• Happy 4th of July.  Enjoy the World Cup.

Read Brian’s other blog entries at IT BULLETins.