Email Archiving, Email Hosting - SaaS

One Man's Take On Security in the Cloud

 

An article on Network World caught my attention - a surprisingly decent addition to the ongoing debate about security concerns with the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model. I realize that it's a legitimate concern, unlike those of which pertaining to global warming.

Genetically designed to be skeptical of any buzzwords, I accept that cloud services need more scrutiny. The only entity that knows more about my personal tendencies is my email account, and naturally I want it to be secure. I shudder to think what it takes to entrust your billing, operations or human resources needs to a third party vendor. When the services we're talking about are email archiving and compliance, I can totally see where the general feeling of skepticism comes from.

From the viewpoint of a cloud-based company, I can say that we're all too aware of what's at risk and that we work tirelessly to ensure that we can provide a service that is secure and reliable. As Jon Brodkin mentioned in his article, multi-tenancy is an integral component of cloud computing services. You can be at ease knowing that we take every measure possible to ensure that you and ONLY you can see what belongs to... you. To quote John Hammond from Jurassic Park, "No expense is spared."

White House Email: Coming to a Theatre Near You

 

As CNN reported yesterday, the Bush White House doesn't have to turn over email records. According to the story,

[A] three-judge panel in Washington concluded the Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act over disclosure of its documents because "it performs only operational and administrative tasks in support of the President and his staff and therefore, under our precedent, lacks substantial and independent authority."

This case and the "missing" emails have been long-standing headline makers over the last few years. Watching each development has given many of us in the messaging industry our own little soap opera to follow (with plot twists and turns almost good enough for Hollywood). From the disclosure that the emails were lost due to an archiving hardware failure to the day that the emails were mysteriously "found" - each episode leaves us biting our nails and wondering what's next. Now we've got a ruling in the ongoing lawsuit filed by private groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). What's next? The long-awaited sequel to Tom Hanks' "You've Got Mail" - "Dude, Where's My Email?"

Think Twice Before You Delete That Email…

 

If you follow Andrea Coombes' advice in her recent Wall Street Journal write-up, you may find yourself in some hot water the next time you search your inbox for an email. She suggests that, "If you can deal with the email in two minutes or less, do it and delete it." My question is this - what happens when, for whatever reason, you need to call upon that message again and it's not there? What if that particular thread of communication becomes relevant to pending litigation and it's gone forever? You may want to keep these questions in mind, especially if you're not familiar with your office's backup practices.

As Coombes' article notes, it's no secret that as the Internet continues to mature, we're going to be bombarded with more information than ever before. According to the 2003 report "How Much Information?", 63 percent of the U.S. work force receives 1.6 gigabytes of information on average every day through emails, reports, blogs, text messages and more. As dated as this report is, it's safe to assume that number has doubled in the past six years.

So, how are we going to handle the influx of information in our digital mailboxes?

Take our CEO Nick Mehta for example. He subscribes to Coombes' advice and is a founding member of the "respond, file, or delete it" club, but there's a huge caveat. He deletes liberally because all of his emails are being archived. While his inbox remains pristine, his deleted messages are just a click away in his personal archive folder.

The bottom line is that there are tools out there that can help manage the increased load of information. Don't go it alone and most importantly, don't blindly delete emails that are seemingly inconsequential today. That "2-minute and done" message may be the one that saves you from a lawsuit down the road.

Leveraging the Cloud to Power through the Economic Crisis

 

In a recent study by Savvis, they describe how a new breed of IT leaders is leveraging cloud computing to realize short-term cost savings and improved efficiency. The study was conducted in January of this year with more than 300 IT leaders in mid-to-large enterprises in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore.

The findings reiterated what most of us already know - most companies and their IT departments are struggling to find solid financial ground in the current economic crisis. In fact, IDC recently changed its earlier predictions about worldwide IT spending in 2009, revising its estimate of 2.6 percent growth to just 0.5 percent.

Amidst this backdrop, it was also clear from the study that this new breed of IT professionals has some fresh characteristics - they are nimble, forward-thinking and view technology as a strategic enabler. Now more than ever, IT leaders have to continue innovating, creating competitive advantages and must maintain a "lean and mean" corporate physique to remain aggressive in the marketplace.

So, how and where is this innovation coming from?

With 52 percent of all IT leaders globally seeing their cost savings derived from reducing infrastructure costs, a real opportunity exists for them to re-evaluate their existing IT infrastructure and consider a different approach that will have both short and long-term benefits.

The study then went on to divide the respondents into two camps: one camp (49 percent of all respondents) said that their organization is not doing well; the other camp (surprisingly 51 percent of those surveyed) who think that their companies are doing "well" or "very well" and are continuing to grow despite the global recession. Here are some of the characteristics of the better-performing organizations.

• Leverage cloud computing: 72 percent of all IT leaders believe cloud computing will play an important role in the future of IT and will help companies gain efficiencies and reduce costs.

• Spend more on IT: The IT leaders who are enabling their companies to do well spend 18 percent more of their revenue on IT than those who don't.

• Focus on infrastructure outsourcing: These successful companies spend a significant amount more - up to 32 percent more - of their IT budgets on infrastructure outsourcing.
  

These innovators are far more likely to consider consolidating and outsourcing the number of IT suppliers. As a result, they are able to re-direct staff into more business-critical areas, improve accountability and focus on the long-term while dealing with the day-to-day tactical issues.

As the paper concludes: "Investigating some of the options that successful IT leaders are pursuing: using IT as a strategic tool; asking "What does IT enable?" rather than "What does IT cost?" and focusing on delivering competitive advantage will put IT executives in a strong position. Exploring options to consolidate and re-organize your IT infrastructure and being open to innovative approaches, offers and strategies from reputable vendors may well be the key to achieving this."

We couldn't agree more.

Oh Yes, Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman

As the Los Angeles Times reported, stamp prices were raised again this week. From what I can tell, the reaction was mixed:

• Some people cared (a lot)
• Some folks couldn't care less (maybe they bought a gross of Forever Stamps a year ago?)
• Others had no idea (maybe they only communicate via email and pay all of their bills online?)

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, it's certainly an interesting commentary on the essential role email now plays in our personal and professional lives. There are a large number of folks out there who are now so fully dependent on email and the Internet that it doesn't matter to them that stamp prices have gone up four times in four years (disclosure: I'm in this camp).

Interestingly, a spokesperson for the United States Postal Service (USPS) was quick to say that they don't believe the price of stamps will drive more people to email (since we're all paying for Internet access already) -

"I don't think its price that drives people to email because they're paying an email provider also for the service, so ultimately, there is a cost to your bill payments online as well. I think that people like to use different media in different ways and we have got to at the postal service respond accordingly," said Maureen Marion, a spokesperson for the United States Postal Service.

Does this mean that three things are certain in life now - death, taxes and postage stamp increases? Well, wait - I do work at an email storage company so I guess I need to add a 4^th certainty - growing email storage needs.

Are you an Emailaholic?

Do you find yourself shaking uncontrollably if you're detached from your mobile device? Do you have cold sweats if you miss out on Woot's email notifications announcing the deal of the day? Did you miss your daughter's ballet recital in favor of feverishly responding to the dozens of nonsensical messages you receive on a daily basis? If so, you may be an emailaholic and I'd like to welcome you to the club.

Check out this recent study - 

"Small worlds expert Duncan Watts at Yahoo! Research in New York City and a few pals studied the time of day at which around 3,000 individuals at a European university sent emails over an 83-day period as well as the email habits of over 122,000 e-mailers at a US university over a 2-year period."

Not surprisingly, Watts found that a significant number of individuals possess an insatiable appetite for email and continued to send messages throughout all of their waking hours. This group, referred to as emailaholics, clearly thinks of email as a sport - one of which requires utter domination! The second group, fancifully known as the "day labourers" handles most of their email activities during typical working hours.

I KNEW there was a clinical diagnosis for my condition and that my doctor was holding out on me. Recommended treatment - a caffeinated Diet Dr. Pepper to keep me awake so I can email even more - oh, and a lifetime membership in the emailaholics club ;-)

Pretty interesting report, you can read it all here.

Hedge Fund Industry: Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes …

As a vendor of compliance-related services - it's our job to keep up on the regulations. So that's why we've been keeping a close eye on the debate over and legislation surrounding hedge fund registration. We were around in 2006 when the ruling was passed and then subsequently vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

But with the recent financial scandals - what's old is new again. While the Senate is looking closely at the Hedge Fund Transparency Act proposed by Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Carl Levin, D-Mich in January of this year, Congress is now focused on HR 711. This bill, sponsored by Reps. Michael Capuano, D-Mass. and Michael Castle, R-Del. requires hedge fund managers to register as investment advisers.

According to an article in Securities Industry News, there are big developments with HR 711. The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) and Managed Funds Association (MFA) announced that they will support "registration of investment managers - including hedge fund managers - with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

As the article notes,

"Such a process of registration ... creates a relationship and dialogue which supports greater understanding of hedge fund activities," AIMA chairman W. Todd Groome told the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets [late last week].

However the article goes on to say that some in the hedge fund industry don't think HR 711 goes quite far enough ...

At the hearing, James Chanos, chairman of the Coalition of Private Investment Companies, noted that hedge funds lost an average of 18.3 percent last year--their worst performance since 1990--as assets fell from $1.93 trillion to $1.41 trillion. Chanos said he does not think registration as envisioned by the House bill will provide needed protections. "Using the Advisers Act as the basic template for regulation will ultimately prove ineffective to mitigate systemic risk," he said. "We believe that the twin goals of improved investor protection and enhanced systemic oversight could be better achieved with a stand-alone statute tailored for private investment funds."

"We cannot have major players in the financial world operating completely in the dark and answerable to no one," said Capuano. "This bill is simply a beginning."

I couldn't say it any better myself, what a beginning indeed. And, so the debate continues. It will certainly be interesting to watch this story unfold in the coming months.

Raising the Red Flag on Identity Theft in Healthcare

Take note - the red flag on identity theft in the healthcare industry has been raised! We've been receiving more and more calls from our clients in the healthcare industry asking us to get their email encryption turned on (and fast!).

Clearly, healthcare providers are taking their compliance with the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Red Flags Rule seriously. These rules, which are designed to prevent identity theft, went into effect for the healthcare industry a week ago. But wait - hasn't HIPAA always required providers to encrypt patient information (e.g. in email messages and/or attachments) transmitted via the Internet? The answer is "yes." But what's different with the Red Flags rule is that many healthcare providers believe it will be more strictly enforced than HIPAA.

What are other healthcare providers or compliance vendors out there seeing? Are you (or your clients) more concerned about complying with the Red Flags rule or HIPAA requirements? Or do you view them as one in the same?

Image Source: Wikipedia Commons

Don’t try pleading ignorant – Part II

I began my first post by introducing the challenges faced throughout E-Discovery in terms of processes, so now we'll talk about the technology aspect.

On the technology front, you need a simple way to collect and index this information. When it comes to email, tape backups just don't cut it, since they can degrade over time (given that we're talking about physical media), and there's no easy way to perform intelligent searches. For example, say you want to get all of the email between John and Susie from January 2008 through April 15, 2009. With email archiving solutions, whether they be SaaS-based (hosted) or on-premise, all email and attachments are typically indexed when they are ingested into the archive, so you can easily search and quickly find relevant email threads. The ability to do your own searches and cull the list of potentially relevant email can literally save you tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses. And, as an added benefit, you are in a much better position to evaluate the legal merits of cases, claims and likely defenses.

Keep this in mind. E-Discovery is by far the most significant cost driver when evidence in a case involves a large volume of electronically stored information (ESI). Accumulating data throughout the e-discovery process is inherently time consuming and costly. Locating the relevant data, collecting it and then preparing it for review by legal counsel are all integral parts of the routine. The most expensive part of that process is the cost of human review, which is driven by the number of documents requiring review, the hourly rate and the efficiency of the reviewers. This underscores the importance of creating and enforcing sound email-retention policies, storing your email in a central, searchable repository and ensuring that your company can quickly comply with discovery requests.

The demands of e-discovery now require companies and their attorneys to have a rudimentary understanding email archiving technology in order to increase their odds of mounting a successful and cost-effective defense. At a minimum, this'll at least help to avoid having your case thrown out because of ESI mismanagement.

The Odd Couple 2009: The Lawyer and the IT Administrator

I remember watching The Odd Couple reruns as a kid, struggling to decide if I wanted to grow up to be Felix Unger or Oscar Madison.  Being a sportswriter is probably more my style than being a photographer, but I wasn't sure I could deal with the mess.

As luck would have it, I ended up going into archiving instead: not nearly as cool or sitcom-worthy, but still pretty messy.

In particular, it's astonishing to me how much of the challenge of archiving, records management, E-Discovery and data management in general revolves around the fundamental differences between IT professionals and lawyers in typical organizations.

Think about it.  Law is all about the gray areas while IT is pretty black and white (servers are up or they are down).  Law is all about nuances while IT is pretty blunt.  Legal wardrobes are pretty nice... you get my point.

Where the Odd Couple really comes out is in email archiving and E-Discovery, in that IT and legal must sit together and make tough decisions (e.g., how long should I keep my email).  IT and legal are now being forced to talk more than they ever have before.

As Debra Logan at analyst firm Gartner Group points out, in many cases, though they may be talking, they still are not communicating:

Those aren't dialogs, they are lazy cop-outs and/or a grave lack of understanding of what really needs to happen. I used the word grave with intent. Not understanding technology is becoming a handicap for lawyers and indeed at least one high profile Magistrate Judge has stated that lawyers need to understand technology to do their jobs. Electronically stored information is now the predominate form of business record. Lawyers (partners, not junior associate spear carrying types) who know this area stress the need for involvement from senior litigators, because e-Discovery can often be a strategic issue in preparing a case. 

Beyond communication breakdowns, however, many of the problems are simply around conflicting incentives.  While IT professionals are driven to minimize one risk (management and users getting upset), legal often tries to minimize another (lawsuits, fines, etc.).  In some cases, these risks are at odds with each other.

The good news is that things are changing because E-Discovery is forcing more alignment.  The bad news is that the change isn't always easy or pretty.  Do I smell a new reality TV series?

Don’t try pleading ignorant – Part I

The following stat stopped me in my tracks.

According to Kroll Ontrack, more than half of the approximately 138 reported electronic discovery rulings (issued in the U.S. in the first 10 months of last year) addressed court-ordered sanctions, data production and preservation, and spoliation issues of ESI (electronically stored information). Increasingly, judges can and will hand out sanctions for mishandling ESI and not providing clear policies for document retention.

The challenge for many companies facing litigation is just the sheer volume of electronic data out there. In today's electronic age, 90% of documents are no longer printed on paper. And email has become one of the biggest sources of ESI as well as one of its biggest challenges. So how can your company be prepared should it face some type of litigation? Part of the solution involves process. Part of the solution involves technology. The former is discussed below and the latter will be the focal point of part II.

On the process front, you need to determine which ESI you plan to retain and for how long. So, let's look at email for the time being.

In highly regulated industries, your retention periods are defined for you by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and/or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). With the 2006 amendments to the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, ANY company with the potential to be involved in federal litigation (i.e. most companies) should already have a plan in place on how they plan to collect, retain and ultimately dispose of email based on predetermined retention policies. Their email administrator will also thank them for this.

However, policies need to go beyond words. They must be enforced. Courts have taken a dim view on companies that have email policies on the books, but then enforce them in an inconsistent manner. In addition, you need to have a plan on how you intend to retrieve email in the event of legal discovery. But, above all else, there should be a formalized process in place to preserve email via legal holds. In fact, not having such a plan has been the undoing of many corporate defenses in recent years.

My next blog will discuss the items to consider on the technology front...

WHOA! You’ve got archiving in the cloud all wrong…

 

I recently stumbled upon an interesting article on CNN Money and as a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, felt like saying a word or two.

Take this scenario for example. A typical small and medium business (SMB) such as an investment firm with roughly 50 employees is looking for an email archiving solution to address their storage needs. They'll have to choose between a traditional on-premise archiving solution or go through a "hip" SaaS provider.

When considering an on-premise solution, the following fixed costs should be considered:

Software

• License(s)
• Support and upgrades
• Implementation
• Health Check
• Training

Hardware

• Server(s)
• Primary storage
• Disaster recovery storage
• Disaster recovery bandwidth
• Maintenance
• Space, power, heating and cooling

Personnel

Through the use of our nifty total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator, we can come up with some ballpark numbers for an on-premise solution which are shown below.

 

Now let's take a look at the TCO for a SaaS-based email archiving solution, which includes the following costs:

* Software Costs

o License
o Implementation

And just to be sure, let's compare the two results.

 

This case uses only 50 users, but even if we had 500, the savings are significant.

I could just let the numbers do the talking, but just as a last few last words, SaaS is not something the software industry came up with overnight (we are not THAT good). It has been around forever and is used in most industries such as travel (Travel-as-a-Service) and healthcare (Medicare-as-a-Service).

Think about the world without TaaS, to travel from LA to NYC we'll have the following options:

* Call an airline and eventually place an order for your ticket after being on hold for 15 minutes
* Buy a Gulfstream G5 and fly to NYC (Hey, a guy can dream)

But with TaaS, we can buy a JetBlue ticket online and hop on a plane that same day. And you even get free DirecTV. Maybe we should start offering that with our service, too.

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud...

LiveOffice has been offering hosted email archiving services since 2001.  As such, we have evolved and grown under the radar, while the media constantly found new names for what we and our brethren do, including:

• Hosting
• Application Service Providers (ASPs - remember those?)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Cloud Computing

While each term truly has its own unique nuances, our business model itself has remained pretty consistent:

• No software or hardware to buy, deploy or manage
• Predictable pricing per user per month
• Securely delivered over the Internet
• Automatically patched and updated

Since cloud computing is the latest label for our industry, we are now going through the predictable hype cycle that all of us have seen many times before:

• Initially: This could be big
  
• Shortly thereafter: This is going to change everything
• Around the same time: Everyone is going to use this
• Upon reflection: Well actually, no one is going to use this
• At the same time (from the other side): No wait, some people will use this and are using this
  
• Much later: Wow, almost everyone is actually using this
  

Think about it.  Remember the articles you read about the Internet in 1995?  The initial predictions were overblown.  Then people said it was dead and a fad during the dotcom crash.  And now look at how it has blown past most of our wildest imaginations.

In the same way, businesses leveraging externally-hosted IT solutions, versus running IT systems themselves (which is what hosting/ASPs/SaaS/cloud computing really is) is going through the same natural evolution.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. recently released a report on cloud computing throwing water on the flames of the hype.  One of the key findings, that generated tremendous controversy, was as follows:

Clouds already make sense for many small and medium-size businesses, but technical, operational and financial hurdles will need to be overcome before clouds will be used extensively by large public and private enterprises 

As someone benefiting from the growth in cloud computing, you know what my response is to that?  I agree.  100%. 

It's obvious, isn't it?  Cloud computing is a new area and, by definition, "hurdles" will need to be overcome.  If there were no hurdles, it would not be new.  I'm not sure why that is surprising to anyone.

In fact, I believe in this trend so much that I want the hype to be contained, because the hype obscures the real trends taking place under the covers - namely:

• Small and medium-sized businesses have largely had no good options when it comes to IT infrastructure, given their scale and expertise.  Cloud computing finally levels the playing field.  And although "small" business sounds like a tiny market, it's anything but that.
• At the same time, I am amazed by the number of large companies who, despite knowing all of the hurdles and barriers alluded to above, are still finding cloud-based solutions to be worth the trade off.

So let's get the cloud computing hype over with, because the reality is too promising for us to ignore.

E-Discovery powers through the downturn

Clearwell Systems, a leading E-Discovery software vendor, reported 250% revenue growth and its first quarter of profitability, last week.

We at LiveOffice think highly of the Clearwell solution and find it to be very complementary to our email archiving software-as-a-service offerings.

But beyond feeling happiness for our friends and for some positive news during the recession,  I am amazed at how much vendors in the email archiving and E-Discovery spaces are reporting continued growth despite the economic headwinds.

As we reported previously, our Q4 2008 was up 148% year-over-year.  In addition, our Q1 2009 was a record in terms of revenue and number of transactions.  Finally, as we have been for many years, we continue to be profitable each quarter.

And as I talk to my friends in the overall space of archiving and E-Discovery, I continue to hear similar stories.  Customers are finding ways to keep these projects going because they save hard dollars and in some ways are becoming more important, with the increased regulatory scrutiny and litigation coming from the events of the past year.