Email Archiving, Email Hosting - SaaS

With the Money You Could Be Saving ...

Amy Dugdale — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:53:00 GMT

My stepdad owns a small manufacturing company in Chicago and he has been dragged into the digital era kicking and screaming for two decades. About ten years ago, he broke down and got email accounts for his management team - he does not like email, nor does he trust it (despite his stepdaughter working at an email company). You can imagine the conversations on that one over the years ... in fact here is my recollection of one of these conversations about a year ago:

Me: Who do you use for email hosting these days? [I'm working at an email company, I need to know this]

Him: [Insert name of Chicago-only hosting company that I can't remember.]

Me: How much are you paying? [anticipated answer: $8-10/mailbox/month]

Him: I'm not sure, about $25 per account per month.

Me: [I try to hide my shock - but can't help myself. I am stunned.] Why are you using this company and paying that much?

Him: They are local. If there's a problem, I can go and knock on their door.

Me: [Speechless plus this is a debate I will lose]

But thankfully, I am speechless no more! I have a solution for him and lots of other businesses who want to have a contingency plan if their cloud email provider (or on-premise mail server) has a hiccup. Last week we announced enhancements to our CloudMerge technology that give users of cloud-based email, like my stepdad, peace of mind by ensuring 24-7-365 availability of their email, whether their primary email solution fails or during a planned migration. You can think of it like Geico for your email (or a standby mailbox if you're tech'y) - you can use our technology to send and receive messages via our archive, regardless of the status of your primary email platform.

So there it is - I don't have to hear about $25 email hosting at Thanksgiving this year. Stephen - with the money I'm saving you, I think it's pizza time for us at Lou Malnati's.

Freedom of Choice … It’s a Beautiful Thing!

Stephanie O'Neill — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:39:00 GMT

Have you ever moved only to discover that your current service providers don't serve your new neighborhood? (I have - more than once - and it's an extremely frustrating experience!) Instead of simply taking your services with you, you are forced to start from scratch, often foregoing features you once enjoyed, losing history with a provider, experiencing higher costs, etc. But you have no choice. It's all or nothing.

What I love about our recently announced archiving support for cloud email is the freedom of choice it offers our clients and potential clients. We don't believe in locking you into a solution without any flexibility if your circumstances change. As the old adage goes, change is constant.

But one thing is certain: if you archive your email with LiveOffice, it will still be there, safe and sound, if you need to switch email service providers or decide to move your email to the cloud, as many companies are doing in this day and age. Not only do we support on-premise solutions (Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes and Sendmail), but we are also the first email archiving provider to support all the major cloud-based email providers, including Microsoft Exchange Online, Cisco WebEx Mail, Google Apps and Intermedia. And if, for whatever reason, you need to move your email archive in house, we support that, too.

Ah, a collective sigh of relief ...

Microsoft BPOS Sets Sail With LiveOffice’s Archive

Joe Diamond — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:24:00 GMT

Avast, matey! Microsoft has set sail with yet another mighty acronym-BPOS. With recent price cuts and a robust offering for messaging and collaboration, the pieces of eight are aplenty and the grog nectar is flowing freely.

Excuse all this pirate talk. We just had an office movie night and Pirates of the Caribbean was the flick of choice. All things ♫yo ho yo ho♫ aside, we recently announced that we're able to support Microsoft's cloud-based Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). We're pretty excited to have jointly developed a connector hand in hand with Microsoft that integrates with their BPOS environment. This functionality enables our archive to communicate freely with the standard Outlook client as well as Outlook Web Access (OWA). Benefit: even if the message you're looking for is no longer available in your inbox, it's always available in LiveOffice's secure cloud archive.

Read more about our integration with Microsoft BPOS here.

Archiving for Google Apps Premier… CHECK

Joe Diamond — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Giant Google Gallantly Gallops Gingerly Toward Ginormicism. Say that five times fast! (Patent pending on my fabricated word "ginormicism.")

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware of Google's penetration into a market that has been historically dominated by the Microsoft Office suite. Google Apps, in general, has taken noticeable strides (see L.A. Times) in giving Microsoft a run for its money. While this isn't a proverbial David vs. Goliath tale (it's more like Goliath vs. Goliath), it'll sure be interesting to see whether or not Google will continue to trespass deeper into Bill Gates' enterprise territory.

As Google Apps' market share continues to expand (which includes web-based communication, collaboration and security), one thing is clear - there's room in the cloud for more than one hosted enterprise messaging vendor. Ultimately, and as Nick spoke of in a recent post, it all comes down to choice. That's why we've recently announced our hosted archiving technology which fully integrates with Google Apps.

Read more about our CloudMerge technology and our integration with Google Apps here.

You Can't Take It With You

Dean Nicolls — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:37:00 GMT

As the adage goes, you can't take it with you when you shuffle off these mortal coils.

Well, the same is true when it comes to on-premise archiving solutions. Lately, we've been talking a lot about our Cloud Ready approach to email archiving. Our basic premise is that you need to start thinking about how your archiving solution can move with you if and when you decide to move your email to the cloud (e.g., Microsoft BPOS, Google Gmail for Business, Cisco WebEx Mail, etc.).

A number of folks have asked - why can't I take it with me? If you are using an on-premise or appliance-based archiving solution, your archives are not easily portable for a couple of reasons. First off, these solutions require you to install hardware/appliances on-premise. And the cloud-based email providers will not let you install that stuff inside their own data centers. Secondly, on-premise solutions rely on the MAPI protocols or log shipping which do not work with cloud-based email solutions. With cloud-based archiving solutions, however, you can archive your email from cloud-based providers if the right connections have been engineered and enabled.

Other folks are looking at cloud-based email solutions which bundle in archiving with their email solutions, but this approach has also been fraught with challenges. Their archiving solutions generally have limited functionality (e.g., don't include Outlook/Lotus Notes/BlackBerry integration or don't have well developed e-Discovery or compliance workflows). Also, they typically do not support other cloud email solutions so your archiving is inextricably bound to the underlying email solution. This means if Gmail goes down, your archive is down, too. Increasingly, CIOs and IT managers are leery about keeping all of their eggs in one basket.

Cloud-based email archiving solutions help mitigate these risks and minimize your exposure, plus they give you an independent backup of all your data that lets you send and receive email even if your cloud email provider falls down.

Isn't it time to liberate your email?

Cisco WebEx Mail? – Yep, We Support That

Joe Diamond — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:11:00 GMT

We here at LiveOffice are pretty passionate about our agnostic approach to email archiving. After all, we support every key email platform out there. Our CEO loves to say (with a huge grin, no less) that we're neutral like Switzerland. I just say that we've got that "Care Bear Stare" - we've formed a ray of love and good cheer for all things email archiving, and our lives just aren't complete unless we share it with one and all.

In that same vein, we've not only added support for the newly announced Cisco WebEx Mail, we've also become their preferred email archiving provider. As the only non-Microsoft solution to offer protocol-level (MAPI and RPC over HTTP/S) support for Microsoft Outlook, we can say without a doubt that Cisco's entry into cloud email will alter the competitive landscape.

As always, we're just pleased to see the continued growth of the cloud as a delivery model. And best of all, we're excited to be a part of it.

Free Your Archive to Work With Cloud-Based Email

Nick Mehta — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:28:00 GMT

When you think about all-time great quotes in movie history, this one from Braveheart certainly has to be in the conversation:

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

While William Wallace's cause was a lot more important, we at LiveOffice also believe in freedom.

In the spirit, we announced yesterday that we're the first independent email archiving solution to support email archiving and email continuity for all major on-premise and cloud-based email systems. Now our customers have freedom to move their email wherever they want, knowing that their archive will continue to work. You can read coverage of our announcement at eWeek, ZDNet and SearchStorage.

If you follow the messaging world, you've probably seen the huge amount of activity and interest in cloud email recently, including:

Gartner Group predicting the percentage of business mailboxes that are hosted soaring from 1% to 20% by 2012.
Microsoft predicting that 50% of Exchange mailboxes will be cloud-based in the next five years.
Google winning the huge project to modernize email for the City of Los Angeles.
Microsoft dropping pricing for its Exchange Online service to $60/user/year, making it very competitive with Google's $50/user/year price point.
Cisco announcing its new cloud-based, Microsoft Outlook-compatible Cisco WebEx Mail service.
Microsoft releasing the long-awaited Exchange 2010
Independent provider Intermedia becoming the first cloud provider to offer hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010.

And that was all in the last few weeks!

As I speak with customers in my travels, the interest in cloud-based email is off the charts, as customers look to benefit from the economics, scale and focus of providers like the ones above.

At the same time, clients have a number of concerns including:

Legal/Compliance: How do I ensure retention, discovery and compliance best practices if my email is in the cloud.
Reliability: What if my provider goes down? What if they lose my data?
Lock-In: What if I don't like my provider and want to switch? What if I want to bring it in-house?

We see archiving as a great way to address all three of these concerns:

Freedom: With a cloud-based archive that supports cloud-based email systems, you are free to address your legal/compliance issues no matter where your email resides.
Backup: A cloud-based archive, properly setup, can also act as an insurance policy for cloud-based email. It becomes a backup of all of your email data, so your eggs aren't all in one basket. In addition, some cloud-based archives offer email continuity, allowing you to send and receive from the archive if the email provider is down or unavailable.
Portability: Since the cloud-based archive has a second copy of your data, you are now able to switch email providers with ease, knowing you control your data. You now have leverage over your provider.

In this spirit, we announced that we were the first email archiving provider to support all major cloud-based email platforms, including:

123Together
AppRiver
Apptix
Azaleos
Cisco WebEx Mail
Google Apps (Premier)
groupSPARK
Intermedia
Microsoft Exchange Online
PanTerra Networks
USA.NET
Yahoo! Zimbra
Other POP/IMAP-based solutions
Personal Email Accounts (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail)

You can learn more here or by watching our snappy video on the functionality.

Also please join us for our webinar, tomorrow, Thursday, November 12, 2009 @ 10:30 AM PT where Brian Babineau from analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group and I will discuss the trend toward cloud-based email and its impact on archiving.

We'll have a ton more to share in the coming days about the details of our integrations, some of the benefits customers are already seeing and where we go from here.

Now I'm going to call Mel Gibson to see if he wants to be our spokesperson...

Top 10 Reasons Why You Need a Cloud Archive With Exchange 2010

Nick Mehta — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:21:00 GMT

If you're a messaging geek like me, you know Microsoft announced Exchange 2010 General Availability today. Major releases from Microsoft don't come too frequently, but when they do, they have a big impact.

Read Microsoft executive Rajesh Jha's very personal and eloquent blog post on the Exchange 2010 release to see some great customer quotes about how Exchange 2010 has helped businesses already, such as this one from Bank of America SVP Allan Tagg:

"We're always moving users around. We've been doing that with custom scripts in Exchange Server 2003, but we will definitely be using the Online Move Mailbox feature in 2010. Now we can move them without taking the mailbox offline."

Overall, Exchange 2010 is huge for the industry. Congrats to Microsoft on continuing to push the bar on innovation.

You may remember that with our pure software-as-a-service approach to email archiving, we were able to announce Exchange 2010 support on September 1, 2009.

And while Exchange 2010 claims some limited archiving functionality, I encourage customers to look below the surface to understand what they are getting.

Indeed, you can read this excellent review of Exchange 2010 by Joel Snyder at Network World, including this critique of the archiving functionality:

Personal archiving
Joel says: Thumbs down...for now.
With Enterprise licensing, you can enable a personal archive for any user, which creates a twin mailbox in the same message store. Users can drag-and-drop mail there, or Exchange rules can move it there automatically based on policy. Intended as a replacement for those PST files that users seem to keep creating, and losing, the archive doesn't make much sense as long as it has to be stored in the same mailbox database as the original mailbox -- which it does in this release of Exchange. When that limitation is lifted and you can give users tons of slow, cheap storage for e-mail archiving, this'll be a thumbs-up.

So without further ado, here's our highly-self-serving but nonetheless true list of reasons you need a cloud archive with Exchange 2010:

10: No Single Instance Storage (SIS): To achieve the storage optimization for Exchange 2010, Microsoft was forced to disable the already-limited SIS capabilities in previous versions of Exchange. This means you'll be using up even more disk for that 100th version of the same 20 MB corporate PowerPoint presentation!

9: Requires Enterprise license: While Exchange 2010 may advertise "built-in" archiving, the functionality requires that you have the Enterprise version of the license, creating extra expense for most customers.

8: Requires Outlook 2010: In the same theme, the supposedly "free" functionality requires that customers upgrade to Outlook 2010. Obviously desktop app upgrades are a big (and costly) deal for most companies.

7: E-Discovery workflow is awkward: Customers that use Exchange 2010 for E-Discovery will be surprised to know that search results from a discovery have to be exported to an Exchange mailbox, versus the normal route of exporting them to the file system. This means that if you have a big discovery request with 100s of GBs of data, you'd better clear up some server space! In addition, because Exchange 2010 doesn't provide a cloud-based archive, your outside counsel or other external partners can't easily collaborate on E-Discovery.

6: No SEC/FINRA email compliance: If you are a customer that has requirements around storing email on immutable storage (known as WORM storage) or supervising email for policy violations, you will still need a third-party archiving system.

5: Your email can't go down: Exchange 2010 has significantly enhanced the redundancy of the Exchange platform. However, whether its because of power issues, network issues or data center issues, your email service is still vulnerable and for most Exchange administrators, that's scary. Some cloud-based archiving solutions provide the added benefit of built-in email continuity, ensuring you can send and receive messages even if your internal email server is unavailable.

4: No backup/restore optimization: One of the biggest drivers for email archiving in the early days wasn't around compliance, discovery or anything so business-oriented. Customer email databases were getting too big and backups were taking too long. This meant backups were overrunning stated windows and restores were becoming impractical. Unfortunately Exchange 2010 archiving keeps archived data in the same email database as primary data, despite the fact that it's not changing anymore. This means your backups continue to grow and grow. In contrast, with a cloud-based archiving solution, you can keep your primary databases (and related backups) small and offload older data to the cloud.

3: Still in storage business: In that same vein, fundamentally, with Exchange 2010, you are still in the business of buying and managing storage to meet your users' ever-growing demands. That means more vendor meetings, more procurement, more money and more scaling issues. And since all of the data needs to live in the same storage device for primary and archived mailboxes, this means more expensive storage, even for data that's never used. In contrast, with a cloud-based archive, you never have to buy storage again, unless you really want to!

2: Unpredictable costs: Netting it all out, with the backup complexities and growing storage environment, Exchange 2010 archiving means you are still in the same world of having to guess where you email usage will be in a few years and size accordingly. Guess low and you end up having scaling issues. Guess high and you wasted money. In contrast, a cloud-based archive gives you predictable, flat costs with unlimited storage, so you don't have to worry.

1: Lock you out of the cloud: Finally, customers will choose third-party cloud-based archives because they are also looking at moving email to the cloud - with Microsoft or possibly with Google, Cisco, Intermedia or a host of other vendors. Needless to say, Exchange 2010 archiving would lock them out of that flexibility.

Cisco Acquires Cloud-Based Web Security Provider ScanSafe for $183 Million

Nick Mehta — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:08:00 GMT

We have a lot of respect for peers of ours in other cloud computing categories. In particular, ScanSafe has been an innovator in the cloud-based web security space for a long time.

Today, Cisco's security business unit announced they are acquiring ScanSafe for $183 million.

"With the acquisition of ScanSafe, Cisco is executing on our vision to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services for advanced security enforcement," said Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology Business Unit (STBU). "Cisco will provide customers the flexibility to choose the deployment model that best suits their organization and deliver anytime, anywhere protection against Web-based threats."

I've met with Tom Gillis at Cisco before and he's an impressive leader. Between the amazing success IronPort has had and the new acquisition of ScanSafe, it seems like Cisco is doing well in the cloud security space.

Congrats to Cisco and the ScanSafe team. Seems like a good fit for both and more validation of cloud computing in general.

Boston Email Blunders Extend Beyond Mayor’s Office

Stephanie O'Neill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:41:00 GMT

State public records law? What state public records law? Apparently Boston city leaders didn't get the memo ... or at least they didn't let old habits die when improper email deleting practices first came to light.

Last month, I wrote about a key member of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino's staff, Chief Policy Adviser Michael J. Kineavy, deleting emails without regard for state public records laws. The issue came to light when the Boston Globe requested copies of Kineavy's emails over a six-month period, which only returned 18 results. This led to the revelation that Kineavy deleted all of his email on a daily basis, without letting them be backed up, in direct violation of Massachusetts public records law.

But the saga continues ...

It turns out that many employees at Boston City Hall were deleting emails regularly - it was a common and seemingly acceptable practice for mailbox management. The problem is state public records law requires the city to preserve "all city email" for two years. Even more surprising, the Boston Globe discovered that a state judge warned Mayor Menino's administration that city employees were deleting email nearly a year ago, but no one did anything to stop it.

Now, Kineavy's computer is undergoing a forensic review, and who knows if city employees are still deleting emails. But I bet Mayor Menino wishes he had a seamless email archiving solution in place right about now.

Email Deflates Balloon Boy Hoax

Stephanie O'Neill — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:13:00 GMT

Once again, email records are at the center of a highly publicized case. This time, they foil a plot for what appears to be fame. Mission accomplished, but I am pretty sure felony charges aren't what the Heenes had in mind.

I realize I may sound like a broken record, but I still find it surprising that people don't know better in this day and age. Even if you put all the ethical and parental lapses of this case aside, who thinks they can put an elaborate plan like this in writing - in email, no less - and not have it come back to bite them? That's a rhetorical question, of course.

But perhaps even more surprising, reports indicate that a "media outlet" may have been involved in the hoax (to what extent, if any, remains to be seen). If this turns out to be true, the plot will definitely thicken - especially if more emails are involved. Let's be clear here: They absolutely should know better. Whether they are a highly respected news organization or in the company of tabloid paparazzi, any organization that has a chance of being involved in litigation within the U.S. Federal Court system must be prepared for legal discovery, according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). For most companies, this means an email archiving solution. But one way or another, if this yet unnamed organization was involved, emails will most certainly come into play - and if they aren't able to produce the data in a timely manner and prove that it wasn't tampered with, they will have another issue on their hands.

Only time will tell. But whatever the outcome of this strange case may be in the coming weeks and months, I think it's safe to say that the Heenes' reality show dreams floated away with that balloon ... at least I hope so!

Cloud wars: IBM enters cloud email price battle

Nick Mehta — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:37:00 GMT

Fans of the Godzilla franchise will attest to the fact that it's fun to watch giants at battle.

Last week, IBM introduced LotusLive iNotes, its cloud-based email offering in response to Google Apps and Microsoft Online Services.

As LiveOffice is a long-time provider of cloud-based email archiving services, we are excited about the increasing choice for customers in cloud email.

IBM has chosen to enter the market at a low price point ($36 per user per year, versus $50 for Google) but provides fairly limited mailbox sizes (1 GB) in its first iteration.

With rumors of Cisco entering the market, the battle is certainly going to be exciting to watch.

Matt Cain from analyst firm Gartner Group put it well in a recent interview with CRN.com:

"It's going to be a battle to the death," said Cain. "It's going to be great because the customer wins.

Let the wagers begin as to who ends up as Godzilla and who becomes Mothra.

Groundhog Day: Email is dead again... not!

Nick Mehta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:04:00 GMT

One of my favorite movies of all time is Bill Murray's masterpiece, Groundhog Day. In the movie, Bill is stuck in a small town in my native Pennsylvania, where he wakes up each day to repeat the day before.

Every year, I read the same article and I feel like I'm stuck in that movie. You know that article. The one with the brilliant insight that we get too much email and that we can't keep up. And that some (IM, SMS, facebook, twitter, Google Wave) new technology will repeat it.

Well here's the latest Groundhog Day sighting from the Wall Street Journal:

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.
In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold-services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate-in ways we can only begin to imagine.

You can read my thoughts at my last post on this topic, after the last article with exactly the same theme, about a year ago. These articles seem to pop up once a year, as predictably as Punxsutawney Phil finds his shadow.

Admittedly, since I run a cloud-based email archiving provider, I'm highly biased.

However, many others agree with me. As analyst Michael Osterman put it in his response, the reason these email death sentences are ridiculous is that the new communication media tend to be complements to, not replacements of, email:

Further, it's important to understand that email is not really competitive with instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook or other tools -- for the most part, these tools are complementary. For example, if it's 3:00am and I need to send a file to someone, I will have little expectation that the recipient will be available via IM, and I can't send them a file on Twitter, but I can send them an email knowing they'll receive it in the morning. If it's 10:00am and I need a quick answer to a question, I can IM someone whose presence status I can see. If I want to follow the comments and news pointers from people whose opinion I consider valuable I will use Twitter. If I need to collaborate on a project via a shared workspace, I will use any of the growing number of tools built for that purpose.

Similarly, blogger Email Tide points out that the beauty of email is that it keeps evolving:

In reality, email is still evolving to better handle the vast amounts and types of information that it was never intended for. New social networking services, instant messaging, voice, video, presence, wikis, blogs, bookmarking, media sharing and micro blogging will eventually all come together and complement each other, and email will definitely be part of the mix. Solutions such as Xobni or Baydin are leading the way to a more useful and better-integrated mailbox.

So email isn't dead and probably won't be for quite a while. However, that doesn't mean we'll stop talking about it.

Prime Time: Exchange 2010 takes the field

Nick Mehta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:05:00 GMT

Quick post but we're excited to see Microsoft has released Exchange 2010 to manufacturing. They are targeting November 9th for General Availability.

Microsoft is claiming 10 million mailboxes already hosted on Exchange 2010 via its Live@Edu educational hosting program.

As we announced back on September 1, 2009, we officially support email archiving of Microsoft Exchange 2010 today. Indeed, as we discuss in the previous post, we think there is a great value proposition for using archiving ahead of a move to Exchange 2010 to reduce migration time, cost and risk.

Beyond the buzzword: SaaS wanna-bes

Nick Mehta — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:09:00 GMT

With apologies to Ginger, Scary, Baby, Posh and Sporty of the Spice Girls, if you "really really want" a software-as-a-service solution for email archiving, you often have to search through many wanna-bes.

One of the most common techniques for half-SaaSing one's way into cloud is for on-premise vendors to take license software and attempt to host it themselves or through partners.

Phil Wainewright at ZDNet refers to this as SoSaaS, or "Same old Software, as a Service."

The excellent analysts at Haut Tech put this as #1 in their spot-on list of "Ten Ways to Fail as a SaaS Company":

Your licensed product is very unlikely to be a good candidate for a SaaS product. This is a "test" of something you can never sell, maintain, operate or scale to reach a decent market. So - what are you testing? This is what is known as SoSaaS. Vendors of licensed products, especially high-value, line of business applications, typically aim their product at the top of their vertical market. It's just more cost efficient for sales and marketing. The product is loaded with features that satisfy that end of the market and tuned for skilled install by client IT personnel. If it penetrates the 100 top accounts - it's golden. SaaS products are built to sell and scale to a much wider market. If you can't do that you are very unlikely to recover your hosting and maintenance costs - much less further development costs in a SaaS model.

Having lived in both the on-premise and SaaS worlds, I fundamentally believe the business models and product development strategies are different. SaaS vendors can't force fit their way into the on-premise world and software vendors can't magically become service providers.

SaaS for email archiving requires product simplicity, usability and scalability often not found in on-premise solutions. In addition, on-premise vendors typically don't have the in-house experience in network operations, service level management and billing that is required for the second "S" in SaaS.

So if your on-premise software vendor tells you they have a new SaaS "delivery model" or "hosting capability," I'd take the Spice Girls' advice:

Now don't go wasting my precious time
Get your act together we could be just fine

Showing On-Prem Email the Door

Amy Dugdale — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:51:00 GMT

Once in awhile, a blog post rolls around that is so profound, you can't help but blog about it. Eric Knorr - you rock. The excerpt from your entry that follows below is simply poetic -

It's time for e-mail to go. Out of the datacenter, pronto. Get the hand trucks, hold the door, and roll those mail servers outta here. Email is a storage hog, a time-suck to manage, a compliance liability, and about the least strategic thing imaginable. It's one of the few "services" that seems absolutely perfect for the cloud: a commodity with a well-known, pedestrian set of expectations. Please, let somebody else handle it.

And, then there's this ...

I just want e-mail to be isolated as an enterprise-class cloud service, with all the modern archiving and anti-spam and compliance features you could ask for and a massively scalable underlying server infrastructure IT never has to worry about. Why is that so hard? Yes, I know some companies can't outsource messaging for compliance reasons. But for everyone else, the time has come to show e-mail the door.

This all sounds familiar ... we hear the same thing from many of our clients each day. They are done managing email and archiving on-premise. If there's one service they're willing to move into the cloud - it's email - and understandably so.

On a related note, we're excited to see IBM throwing their hat into the cloud email ring with the intro of their new Lotus Live iNotes offering. Dear Lotus Notes -- Welcome to the cloud! There's plenty of room and the view is good. -- Sincerely, Your Friends at LiveOffice

SaaS Revenues: The New Darlings of Software

Joe Diamond — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:24:00 GMT

Ray Wang, a partner at Altimeter Group, compiled revenues for some of the larger on-premise and cloud-based providers and discovered an interesting trend. In yet another tribute to Neil Patrick Harris, wait for it... SaaS vendors are seeing year-over-year revenue gains and on-premise vendors, on average... aren't.

Wang's analysis:

"Continued economic pressures force customers to choose best of breed and purpose built solutions. SaaS vendors appear to be the beneficiary as the overall business model aligns with client pain points."

This mirrors what we here at LiveOffice have been seeing within the industry as well. The cloud gives organizations the opportunity to implement solutions that remedy some of their most vital business needs (such as email archiving), at a price that won't have the CFO bawling while keeled over the books. This is all part of a compelling story that will seemingly keep the cloud sky high for years to come. We're just happy to be a part of it.

SaaS Security, the Age-Long Debate

Joe Diamond — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:07:00 GMT

Michael Osterman of Osterman Research submitted an entry to Messaging Wire a couple of days ago about the misconception that the SaaS delivery model is less secure than your average on-premise solution.

He made some excellent points and did so in short order. The following two resonated with me:

Education is the key. Take the time to help decision makers understand how secure (or insecure) their on-premise infrastructure and data transmission actually is.
Help prospective customers to understand that their internal security procedures may be giving them a false sense of security. Is it particularly difficult for an employee to gain access to a server room and run off with a backup tape or external storage device? In many cases, it's not.

Osterman goes on to suggest that leading SaaS providers are able to offer better security because they have access to far more resources than most organizations do with their on-premise implementations. We couldn't agree more.

This entry is just a precursor to a study that Osterman Research will be publishing shortly. We're certainly interested in seeing and addressing the statistics associated with the security aspect of SaaS.

Careful, Hitting “Delete” Doesn’t Always Mean It’s Gone for Good

Stephanie O'Neill — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:27:00 GMT

I am constantly amazed that people, including public officials, still think they can completely delete things they send via email. Although you may delete email from your possession, you have no control over the recipients of those messages - or the recipients they may forward your messages to, and so on. Your company - or government entity, as the case may be - could very well have an email archiving solution in place that is automatic and seamless, and you may or may not know about it. The recipients' organizations are likely archiving as well. One thing is for sure: There is always a trail.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is finding out the hard way that deleting email is not a best practice. Two local city councilors and challengers of Menino in an upcoming Democratic preliminary election are asking the local attorney general and district attorney to investigate the routine deletion of emails by officials in Menino's administration, including those sent and received by one of his closest advisors, Michael J. Kineavy.

The controversy arose when the Boston Globe requested copies of Kineavy's email communications over a six-month period. The search returned only 18 results. The unusually low volume of email led to questioning by city officials and an admission by Kineavy that he doesn't allow his email to be backed up and deletes all of it on a daily basis, which violates state public records law.

The result of this investigation is yet to be determined, but whether or not an archiving solution was in place, chances are that some of those emails will turn up somewhere. An email archiving solution is a really great insurance policy for any organization, public or private, that may become the subject of an investigation or lawsuit - and it saves a lot of time and money in instances like the one brewing in Boston.

This isn't the first time we've seen a case like this, and unfortunately, it's probably not going to be the last. The bottom line? If you're trying to hide something, it will inevitably catch up with you, thanks to technology and the age of electronic communications.

LiveOffice and EOS: A Partnership in the Clouds

Joe Diamond — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:52:00 GMT

It's pitch black outside and the crickets are chirping, but today we decided to wake up early and announce that we've formed a partnership with the UK-based value-added reseller, EMEA Office Systems.

Martin Blackmore and Mark Thomson at EOS both have decades of experience in the storage industry and really know archiving. A few of us at LiveOffice have worked with them in the past and we're glad to be working with them again. When they proposed the idea of a partnership, we were all ears. Their regional knowledge combined with our archiving services provides EMEA-based businesses with the winning option for cloud-based email archiving and e-discovery services.

You can check out the news release here: http://bit.ly/A0Tg8

Ready to Make Your Server the Biggest Loser?

Amy Dugdale — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:25:00 GMT

Today we announced archiving support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and we're pretty excited about it. We've tested the journaling functionality extensively in our labs and it works great. What we're even more excited about is the tools we've built over the last few months to help ease the migration pains that many organizations will inevitably struggle with as they upgrade to Exchange 2010.

We believe companies should have a simple process for shrinking their Exchange data stores prior to moving them so that they can speed up the transition process. So while Valerie Bertinelli has Jenny Craig and Jared has Subway, we're hoping Exchange shops will consider our pre-migration diet, which consists of:

LiveOffice Personal Archive: First, clients enable journaling on their existing mail servers, allowing LiveOffice to capture data in its secure cloud, which effectively eliminates the need to migrate that data in the future. With Personal Archive's robust architecture, end users are able to view all archived email (legacy and current) from the comfort of their Microsoft Outlook client.
LiveOffice CloudMerge for Microsoft Exchange: Next, clients can leverage LiveOffice's proprietary CloudMerge technology to automatically and securely transfer data from existing Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007 mail stores to LiveOffice Personal Archive. Again, this data is available for view by end users directly from Microsoft Outlook.
LiveOffice CloudMerge for PST Files: LiveOffice's CloudMerge technology is also able to securely ingest an organization's PST files into the centrally managed, hosted archive - eliminating the most common source of data loss and IT headaches.
"Skinny Migration:" With all historical and ongoing email securely stored in LiveOffice's cloud-based archive, IT administrators only need to migrate a small amount of data to their upgraded Exchange 2010 environment.

The official launch of Exchange 2010 isn't expected until later this year, but we are encouraging companies to start archiving their messages now so that they can focus on the actual upgrade when the time comes.

You can read our news release here.

SaaS, It’s What’s for Dinner!

Amy Dugdale — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:11:00 GMT

When I finished undergrad, my first job was doing investor relations for pre-IPO dot coms during the late 90s Internet boom. I'm not going to try and be casual about it - undeniably, it was cool. The concept of online search and e-commerce were brand new and SaaS was on the distant horizon. Back then, I had no idea that the day would come when I would count on the Internet for nearly all of my software applications. But that day is definitely here.

Mary Weier recently blogged about the fact that SaaS companies should "dog food" SaaS and we couldn't agree more. We are eating the SaaS dog food and it tastes pretty good - plus it keeps our internal systems lean. Naturally, we use our own Hosted Exchange 2007 as well as Personal Archive and Discovery Archive. We also use:

• Zuora for billing
• Salesforce for CRM
• Vanguard Vista & Survey Monkey for surveys

In marketing, we use SaaS applications to help us with our public relations efforts as well as lead generation and nurture marketing. Our HR department also relies on SaaS for benefits administration and other tasks - and we've also got a SaaS-powered knowledgebase.

So, overall - we are finding that the SaaS life is indeed the good life. Now, if only I'd been able to get in on the friends & family buy for the Amazon.com IPO ;-)

Don’t Email Me Here!

Joe Diamond — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:02:00 GMT

Many people believe that business and pleasure mix like oil and water. In many ways, I strongly agree with this school of thought - especially when it comes to how I use my email. I use my personal email exclusively for topics of the personal nature, and my work-sanctioned email for topics pertaining to my organization. I even take it as far as asking the individuals from my personal world to not email my work address. However, not everyone agrees. When it comes to emailing the Alaska governor's office, you may be directed to a Gmail or Hotmail account rather than a .gov address.

Superior Court Judge Jack W. Smith ruled that those who are employed by Alaska's governor's office can use personal email accounts to conduct state business. Judge Smith supported his ruling in saying that there is no provision in Alaska state law that prohibits the use of private email accounts when conducting state business.

This all started when an Alaska citizen stressed a concern with state officials using personal email for state business. She contended that using private email accounts for state business would prevent citizens from being able to inspect public records.

As of this moment, it's not known whether or not there will be an appeal. But, it'll be interesting to see if Smith's ruling holds. What's your take? Do you think that it's acceptable for state officials to handle state business using a personal email account? Something tells me that we already know what Fred Stresau's stance on the matter is.

LiveOffice named to Inc 5000

Nick Mehta — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:28:00 GMT

I fondly remember seeing my dad's copies of business magazines like Inc and Business Week on the dining room table as a kid and diving into them to see why he worked so late some evenings. My father, a longtime CEO and entrepreneur, always coached me on the merits of running your own business and on the importance small business has to our world.

And while the love that he passed on to me for business magazines may not have won me many popularity contests in middle school, it certainly started a lifelong love of business for me as well.

Inc magazine has long been a tribute to the hardworking small business people through the United States. It's been an honor for us at LiveOffice to be named to the Inc 5000 list for two years in a row.

The specifics of the award mean that our company is growing rapidly, as evidenced by our recent Q2 2009 record results.

More generally, though, we attribute our success to several factors:

The continued recognition by companies, schools, hospitals and governments organizations that email archiving is a must-have.
Increasing adoption of email archiving beyond basic email compliance use cases for email discovery and mailbox management.
Increasing interest in cloud-based services in general and cloud-based email in particular.
The inherent resilience of a software-as-a-service business model, where as long as you maintain your existing clients, your financials are predictable and robust.
Most importantly, the faith that other businesses, many of them small to mid-sized ones, put in our service. It's to them, that we owe so much thanks.

Solving the Mystery of “The Cloud”

Stephanie O'Neill — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:34:00 GMT

Although cloud computing is expected to grow almost threefold over the next few years, reaching $42 billion by 2012 (IDC), it remains an elusive term for many IT professionals. According to a survey by document management software company Version One, 41 percent of senior IT professionals admit that they "don't know" what cloud computing is - a staggering number for such a burgeoning industry.

By definition, cloud computing is simply the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. ("Cloud" is just a metaphor for the Internet.) The meaning gets a bit more complicated as you dig deeper, because cloud computing comprises a broad spectrum of services, including applications, storage and spam filtering. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) all fall under the cloud computing umbrella. For example, LiveOffice email archiving solutions, Salesforce.com and GoogleApps are all examples of cloud-based services.

The beauty of the cloud is that it offers a lot of benefits to meet varying needs.

1. It's on-demand, so you can add new service(s) whenever you need them.

2. It's scalable, so you can use as little or as much of the service(s) as you want.

3. It's affordable and predictable (usually per user, per month fees), which is easier to budget.

4. It's offsite, so it doesn't put a strain on your internal systems or resources.

5. It's easy to setup and use, so you don't have to be an IT whiz to run it.

Unfortunately, the confusion over cloud computing probably isn't going away anytime soon. Whether you're asking an expert analyst, a savvy IT pro or an end user, everyone seems to have their own slightly different idea of what cloud computing really means. In the end, it all comes down to semantics - and it could take a while to iron out the ambiguity. The important thing to remember is that no matter what you call it, it's big for businesses, and it's here to stay.