Email Archiving, Email Hosting - SaaS

SaaS, It’s What’s for Dinner!

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!

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

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”

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.

Canada’s Derailed Emails

Even the Canadian government is required to produce electronically stored information (ESI), despite a ruling that cabinet confidentiality is absolute. BC Rail, formerly a crown corporation, sold to Canadian National Railway in 2004 for $1 billion and is now the subject of a trial surrounding a scandal known to Canadians as "Railgate". Now, emails relevant to the case appear to be getting "star witness" status. The only question is whether or not the messages still exist.

"Potentially the destruction of evidence, whether by recklessness, negligence ... or a willful failure to preserve, could be a very significant factor in the outcome of this case and it potentially could lead to a motion [of dismissal] for abuse of process," said Michael Bolton, one of the lawyers for the defense.

According to the Vancouver Sun, trial judge Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett was told the emails, which were stored on backup tapes, had been sent to a company called EDS Advanced Solutions. The business and technology solution provider was told in May to no longer retain the data. Since then, Justice Bennett has ruled that the emails are indeed relevant to the case, and that they will need to be produced.

At this point, it's clear that the case hinges entirely on the content of these emails. If they can't be produced, the 0-60 time before a motion to dismiss arrives will be less than four seconds. It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.

 

The Big Switch

It's on! The debate regarding how much and how quickly enterprises will shift their data to the cloud is hot. While some already believe the day of "public" cloud utilities is just around the corner, others - like CNET blogger James Urquhart - beg to differ. He makes some great points in a recent post:

           Data is not electricity.

Here is the fundamental difference between data and electricity: With electricity, I don't care what electrons pushed the electrons that ultimately come out of the socket. I also don't care that if I were to generate power and supply it to the grid (through, say, solar panels on my home) who might take that electricity and store it in a battery someplace. An amp is an amp is an amp.

With the cloud, however, I care about exactly which bits come out of my ethernet port. Furthermore, if I generate data and put it out on the Internet, I care exactly where and how my data is stored, and who can have access to it. The Internet is not a shared information grid, its a shared network for transmitting information from one specific point to another. There is a difference.

Urquhart also points out that, "While the infrastructure we use to deliver information technology might be getting commoditized, the information itself won't." In short, he believes the much-talked-about "Big Switch" will slowly take place over several decades vs. a rapid shift in the next few years. At the root of it all is a fundamental trust issue - no one is going to move their data to the cloud until they trust it. In my experience, trusting something means testing it out first.

And that brings us to where we are today - what I would call the middle ground of the Big Switch. We are seeing organizations of all sizes take the first step into the cloud with our SaaS email archiving and hosting solutions. For many, this is their first foray into storing data they care about in the cloud. The necessity is two-fold - first, storing years of email is getting expensive (since mail servers are now replacing file cabinets) and second, they are "testing" the cloud to determine whether or not they are comfortable with it. These companies are also using this small, but significant step into the cloud to introduce the concept to their executive management teams and end users for the first time (ahhhh ... the famed "buy-in" that all management books tell us is essential when launching new initiatives).

But wait, there's even more on the middle ground front - hybrid solutions. These are applications that blend together on-premise systems with the cloud and leverage the best of both infrastructures. We recently formed a partnership with Mimosa Systems, an on-premise archiving provider, to give organizations a hybrid email archiving solution. Using our CloudMerge tool, we are able to seamlessly connect Mimosa's on-premise archive to our cloud-based email archiving application. This gives companies cost-effective long-term email storage and also expedites external e-discovery review.

So while the BIG shift to public cloud utilities may be some time away, we're still encouraged by the progress organizations are making now.

As the saying goes, "Trust is earned, not given."

The Great Missed Email Caper

I once wrote a touching blog entry about my dear Aunt Judi, but she never indicated that she had actually read it, despite the fact that she was an email subscriber. I was hurt. Crushed. Dismayed. How could she blatantly ignore her favorite nephew? Throughout my entire childhood, she insisted that I was the center of her universe. Move forward to 2009, and we're facing The Great Missed Email Debacle of our generation. Today, it's finally clear how this travesty took place.

According to a recent report compiled by ReturnPath, more than 20% of email isn't delivered to inboxes in the United States and Canada. This is mostly the result of the type of junk mail filtering provided by the recipient's email solution of choice. With each solution maintaining its own criteria for such messages, I wanted to investigate further as to the likelihood of my aunt not receiving automated email about my special blog entry.

To say the least, the numbers were staggering. The toughest mailboxes to reach were Gmail (23%), Hotmail (20%), MSN (20%) and Yahoo! (15%). It seems that the emails most likely to not be delivered consist of email alerts, newsletters, automated system updates and generic marketing messages (not surprising). From personal experience, I can tell you that a significant portion of my requested alerts are still being sent to my junk folder. So while this isn't too surprising, the confirmation is nice.

Can you guess which one my Aunt Judi uses? Yup, that's right - Gmail! I got her to sign up for it so I'll take some of the blame. But then again, I suppose she may have simply deleted it. But that's an impossibility, right? I'm choosing to be delusional and insist that it must have been sent to her junk folder. C'est la vie.

P.S. Aunt Judi, if you're reading this, you're only getting dark meat at Thanksgiving!

Can You Turn a Blind Eye to Unread Email?

There's a new land development a-brewin' in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the citizens aren't particularly happy about it. So, rather than picketing or hoping that they'll be heard at a board meeting, they're taking advantage of the power of email. At least, that's what they thought were doing.

Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom revealed Fort Lauderdale Planning and Zoning Board member Fred Stresau's personal email address to the public. "[I was] just trying to make it more convenient for the public to give input. Would they prefer the public call them at home? It's a public process. We are public servants. We are here to serve the public," said Rodstrom.

Stresau thinks otherwise. "I don't need to hear from all these people that were here tonight, to have my e-mail clogged up because the city gave my e-mail address out," said Stresau. He has requested that the city remove his personal email from the public records, but Assistant City Attorney Sharon Miller has suggested that this isn't possible. Stresau's response? "...I'll change my e-mail address. This is absolutely ridiculous!"

It'll be interesting to see how this ends. On one hand, you can understand Stresau's frustration in that his personal email is being used for matters that are not personal. On the other hand, the city doesn't provide advisory board members with a .gov email address, so there's little alternative if residents want to communicate with him via email.