Archiving Strategies: When Deleting is Not an Option

Transcription

1 An IT Briefing produced by Archiving Strategies: When Deleting is Not an Option

2 By Mark Diamond and Bill Tolson 2005 TechTarget BIOS Mark Diamond Mr. Diamond is founder, President & CEO of Contoural, Inc. Under his leadership, Contoural has grown to be an industry leader in developing business and technology strategies for data retention policies and information archiving. A pioneer in the strategic storage services industry, Mr. Diamond has successfully built and grown numerous consulting, education, and support organizations from inception to large, worldwide organizations. Previously, he was co-founder of Veritas s (OpenVision) Professional Services Group. Additionally, Mr. Diamond was founder and General Manager of Worldwide Professional Services for Legato Systems, a supplier of storage software. Bill Tolson Mr. Tolson is a Principal Analyst for Contoural, Inc. He is a 30-year veteran of the high tech industry with over 13 years of storage industry experience. He helps Fortune 100 companies develop and data archival strategies and is a frequent speaker at industry events. Prior to Contoural, Mr. Tolson occupied a variety of positions at companies in the storage industry, including Hewlett-Packard, Iomega, StorageTek, and Hitachi Data Systems. This IT Briefing is based on a Contoural/TechTarget Webcast, Archiving Strategies: When Deleting is Not an Option. To view this Webcast online, please click the link. This TechTarget IT Briefing covers the following topics: Overview Reasons for Archiving Determining Your Archiving Requirements Backing Up With Tapes: Not a Good Archival Solution One Archive or Many? The Five-Second Rule Characterizing the Message System Archiving: In-house or Hosted? Hosted: Advantages and Disadvantages In-house: Advantages and Disadvantages Archiving Systems: What to Look For Scalability Storage Usability Security Additional Considerations Components and Costs Evaluating Archive Systems: Critical Issues Sample Project Plan Phases 1 and Phases 3, 4, and Additional Best Practices Summary Additional Resources Common Questions

3 Copyright 2005 Contoural. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written permission is prohibited, except as allowed under the copyright laws. This IT Briefing is sponsored by Fortiva. To learn more, visit About TechTarget IT Briefings TechTarget IT Briefings provide the pertinent information that senior-level IT executives and managers need to make educated purchasing decisions. Originating from our industry-leading Vendor Connection and Expert Webcasts, TechTarget-produced IT Briefings turn Webcasts into easy-to-follow technical briefs, similar to white papers. Design Copyright 2005 TechTarget. All Rights Reserved. For inquiries and additional information, contact: Dennis Shiao Director of Product Management, Webcasts

4 Archiving Strategies: When Deleting is Not an Option Overview This document discusses the strategies for archiving and explains what to do when deleting is not an option. A few years ago, organizations generally did not save . Now, many organizations want to develop an effective archival strategy. This document explains how to evaluate various archiving strategies, what to ask vendors, and how to develop an effective project plan for implementing an archival system. Much of the information in this document is based on the authors experience working with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. The authors have helped these companies with policy development, vendor evaluation, and archival implementation. Best practices that have emerged from these experiences are provided in this document. Reasons for Archiving This section explains why organizations that save informally, or not at all, now need to save it in a more formal, structured way. There are a number of business drivers for archiving (see Figure 1). One of the most important drivers, and perhaps the one most people are familiar with, is regulatory compliance. In addition to the relatively new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, there have been updates of existing regulations such as SEC 17a-4 and 21CFR11. A host of regulations highlight the fact that messages Figure 1 1 IT Briefing:

5 are important business documents. Some of these documents need to be archived and given the same level of protection that has been afforded to paperbased documents. Regulators are saying that must be saved. When it is saved, it must be able to be retrieved quickly and easily when needed. Another factor that might be an even bigger driver than regulatory requirements is the recent focus on electronic documents as part of litigation discovery. Every company faces litigation in the course of doing business. The litigators are getting extremely good at focusing on as part of the discovery process. One of the first discovery requests made of a company in a lawsuit is to provide some or all of its . Sometimes the discovery requests look for a significant amount of . Litigators use that as a tactic to raise a company s pain level, knowing that if it is difficult for them to find the , they may be able to more quickly be pushed into a settlement. Litigators know that the cost of discovery can be very high. And the risks and costs of failing to produce the may be even higher. Another issue is productivity. End users are beginning to say that, in their opinion, should not be temporary. They want to keep a significant amount of their and have it available because they believe it will increase their productivity. The problem with an explosive growth of is that without a formal archival system in place, the collects on the mail server with the risk of reduced availability of that server. Servers that are chock-full of take a long time to recover the , and tend to have less availability. Message administrators know that this is not a good thing. It is expensive for an organization to store all of its on the mail server and primary data store. It consumes server and storage resources, and is also expensive in terms of performance and in terms of process costs such as replication and backup. In summary, it is clear that these relatively new business drivers are requiring that organizations archive some or all of their . Determining Your Archiving Requirements To determine archiving requirements, the first step should be to gain an understanding of the problem to be solved (see Figure 2). There are three main drivers of archiving requirements: regulatory compliance; litigation and ediscovery support; and storage management and productivity. Most people will recognize that the most obvious driver is compliance with state and federal regulations for records retention. Sponsors of these regulations include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and many others. The second driver is litigation and ediscovery support. An organization might have requirements for discovery or be in an industry with litigation rates that are higher than normal. Tobacco companies or tire companies are examples of these. Litigation is something to plan for, because discovery requests can occur over and over again, and they can be very costly if there is no system in place to respond to them. The third major driver is storage management and productivity. Organizations must evaluate their system s storage requirements and decide whether to add storage capacity and raise the users mailbox limits, or keep the existing mailbox limits and have the users spend relatively nonproductive time cleaning out their mailboxes. This decision point is well known to administrators. It is important to understand the real problem, or need, before designing a technological solution for archiving . Organizations should have a policy that clearly describes what should be saved, how long it should be saved, and in what manner. The policy should be created before embarking on an evaluation for an archival project. Retention policies will often come from a company s legal, compliance, or records management group. The contents of the policy will dictate the archival solution. 2 IT Briefing:

6 Figure 2 Backing Up With Tapes: Not a Good Archival Solution Knowing that archiving can be expensive, organizations often wonder if the backup tapes that they are already creating and saving can be used for archiving. It is technically possible to do that, but it poses some problems (see Figure 3). One problem is that data recovery from backup tapes can be extremely time-consuming and disruptive. The effort can take hundreds or thousands of hours. Another problem is that Exchange can be finicky, and older versions of Exchange typically cannot be recovered from newer versions. Sometimes it is necessary to find or rebuild the old version of Exchange server to recover a specific backup tape for a specific month, and then go on to the next patch or version for the next backup tape. This can be a difficult technical problem. Some companies, in order to save time or resources, impulsively decide to outsource the archiving to a company that will do all the searching and restorations of from backup tapes. Unfortunately, that can be a very expensive value proposition. Tape recoveries can range anywhere from $1000 to $2000 per tape. If there are 500 tapes to be recovered, which is not uncommon as part of a litigation discovery order or regulatory investigation, the money spent could have funded a large portion of an effective archival solution. Finally, it has been found that companies are effectively noncompliant if they use ordinary backup tapes. One reason is that a backup strategy may miss key messages and attachments, if those were deleted by the sender or recipient before the daily mailbox backup. Also, backup tapes are not an acceptable medium under some regulations, such as SEC 17a-4, which requires companies to use WORM (Write Once, Read Many) storage media. More importantly, many regulations have a requirement that information be retrieved within a day or two. Unfortunately, recovery from backup tape usually takes days, weeks, or longer. Companies that cannot come up with the information quickly enough are not in compliance. For all these reasons, the backup as archive solution does not work, and can turn out to be much more painful than anticipated. Companies often think 3 IT Briefing:

7 Figure 3 about creating an archival solution but keep putting it off until they are faced with an unfortunate situation such as litigation. One Archive or Many? Another question to consider is whether to have a system that stores many different types of electronic documents, or one that stores only (see Figure 4). This is a difficult question that has no easy answer. In addition to , organizations usually need to save instant messages, files, images, videos, and other types of semistructured or unstructured data, as well as structured data such as ERP transactions, CRM transactions, and database records. Some would say that if all of those things are going to be saved, it is easier to manage it all under one system. However, a single, dedicated system for e- mail tends to be the solution that is chosen most often. The reasons for this are discussed later in the document. To answer the question of one archive or many silos, an organization must consider what it needs to save, how much must be saved, the volume of traffic, and whether other types of documents are being saved. That information will help a company decide whether to have a single system that handles just , or a system that handles many different types of electronic documents. It is worth repeating that a majority of organizations decide to go with a dedicated system for . The Five-Second Rule Companies that are implementing an archival system should ask themselves this question: Will users be able to manually archive their in five seconds or less? It has been found that if they cannot do it within five seconds, they will not do it (see Figure 5). The most elegant archiving system in the world will be ineffective if it is not used. Companies should not implement archiving systems that have a manual classification process that takes a lot of energy for users to enter the classification information and enter the into the system. Also, they should not implement a system that requires a close watch over the users. Auditing employees to 4 IT Briefing:

8 Figure 4 Figure 5 5 IT Briefing:

9 ensure that they organize their correctly can require a huge amount of resources. To the extent possible, the archiving system should be automatic one that does not require human processes. In looking at the regulatory and litigation landscape, it is apparent that most medium to large organizations are going to be doing significantly more retrievals than they have in the past. For users who are entering into an archiving system, and administrators who are making a recovery of that , the goal should be to make it as automatic as possible while incurring as little expense as possible. As systems are designed, it is important to think of various loopholes that users could exploit. The classic example is a policy in which s are automatically deleted after 60 days. Users quickly realize that they can reset the 60-day clock if they take the s they want to save and forward them to themselves on the 59th day. Users are very good at finding this type of loophole. Characterizing the Message System Once the primarily problem driver is understood, an organization must understand its system: how it is now and how it may evolve (see Figure 6). It must determine the number of mailboxes to be archived now and how that requirement will grow over the next few years. An organization should consider not just how many employees it has, but how many departmental mailboxes and special purpose mailboxes it has. Special purpose mailboxes alone can add 20% to 30% to the total mailbox count. Some portion of these will have to be archived. Other questions for companies to consider: Is the system Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes? Is it Novell GroupWise, or is it a combination? Companies sometimes have combination systems because one company has acquired another with a disparate system. How will different systems be archived together? Some solutions can accommodate this, while others can not. Figure 6 6 IT Briefing:

10 Is the system centralized, or is it geographically dispersed? Will s be archived from international locations? Some countries have employee privacy laws that will not allow the archiving of certain types of messages. Consider downtime, and what is an acceptable time for an system and archiving system to be down for upgrades and similar reasons. Some industries will have specific storage requirements. For example, SEC rule 17 has a requirement for brokerdealers to archive onto write-once media. Archiving: In-house or Hosted? This section explains the advantages and disadvantages of in-house and hosted systems. Hosted: Advantages and Disadvantages Hosted archiving solutions involve working with an outside company that archives an organization s messages by way of an electronic connection. There are advantages and disadvantages to hosted systems (see Figure 7). The advantages of a hosted system include relatively fast deployment. Although there will be a contract involved, the initial expense is usually small, and extensive capital equipment is not required. Hosted systems have less of an IT resource requirement because the service is outsourced. Scalability of hosted solutions is usually built in. Many hosting service companies provide their services to companies that range from very small to multinational. They usually have systems in place that can scale up to meet demand. Hosted systems are often preferable for companies with widely distributed systems. The disadvantages of hosted solutions include response time. Response time can be a consideration when retrieving or searching messages, but also when trying to quickly recover messages as a result of a litigation discovery order or regulatory request. Another disadvantage is the need to ship sensitive s to an outside vendor for safekeeping. For many companies, the fact that their messages are not going to reside within the four walls of their data Figure 7 7 IT Briefing:

11 center is a major issue. This concern is something that should be considered early in the decision process. In-house: Advantages and Disadvantages Just as with hosted solutions, there are advantages and disadvantages to in-house archiving systems (see Figure 8). In-house systems are easier to customize because they are on a company s site once they are up and running, and the company s own people are working with it. Also, sensitive data is kept in-house in local archive storage. Some of the disadvantages include the up-front purchase cost. The capital equipment cost can be higher than with a hosted system. A company has to have its own IT resources for keeping the system up and running, performing upgrades, and doing backups. There is an ongoing upgrade cost as new software revisions are published, and there are software support costs. It may take time for a company s IT resources to become proficient with regulatory issues and litigation discovery. There may be a lack of specialized knowledge of those subjects. Archiving Systems: What to Look For This section explains five things to look for in archiving systems: Scalability Storage Usability Security Additional considerations Scalability Scalability is a major consideration for an archiving solution. There are many questions a company should ask itself (see Figure 9). How many users will the system initially support? How many mailboxes? Can the system grow as the company grows Figure 8 8 IT Briefing:

12 Figure 9 or as other companies are acquired? How many servers can the system interface with, and can it interface with servers if they are geographically dispersed? Bandwidth considerations come into play also. What is the maximum amount of message throughput, taking into account the number of users? The answers to these questions will drive whether a company has the bandwidth to offer an internal solution or whether it purchases a solution. The bandwidth requirements can be derived by determining the average number of s per day within the system and the average size of those s. How often will an archive be done? Will it be a batch archive, or will it be a real time journal archive? Those questions prompt additional questions about bandwidth. Is archived message search and retrieval performance affected by the size of the archive? If so, to what extent? As an archive grows over time, the access can get much, much bigger. A search and retrieve function will take longer and longer. This must be considered as the solution is being architected. When an end user does a search on some content, does it lock the user s inbox from being used for an extended period until the search is complete? That can result in frustration for a user who undertakes a massive search going back five years through gigabytes of s. Most people implement archival systems gradually. They usually begin with a subset of their organization, typically corporate headquarters. It is important that the implementation is scalable beyond corporate headquarters as other divisions in other locations are added. The following questions need to be asked: Can the entire organization be supported when the archival system is online? Can the system meet the organization s growth plans three years from now? Storage Storage considerations involve looking at the archived architecture and asking related questions (see Figure 10). Is there a requirement to capture messages from personal mailboxes? Are employees using the web and company equipment to access their personal boxes on Yahoo or MSN? If so, do those messages also need to be archived? That needs to be a consideration in certain industries. 9 IT Briefing:

13 Figure 10 Is there more than one system in the company? Due to acquisitions, many companies have come across the problem of having an Exchange system and then acquiring a company that uses Lotus Notes. Can those be combined into a single archive? Can the system capture messages at the gateway? Does the archive support journaling, so that messages are archived in real time, as they arrive? Such a capability ensures that end users cannot delete or alter archived . Originality of the message can be proven if it has been a part of a journaling system. Journaling capability is a question that can be asked of an archiving system manufacturer. There will be an additional cost for that capability. In the event of a discovery or litigation, can an search be done across all mailboxes? If certain messages with certain content are being searched for, can the corporate legal counsel instruct the IT department to do an enterprise-wide search across all mailboxes? When evaluating storage for the archiving solution, consider whether the solution creates a single instance of each message and attachment. An example is a human resources department that sends out an to all 2000 employees to announce a company picnic in two weeks. A 1 MB map in JPEG format is attached to the . In a nonreactive system there could potentially be 2 to 2000 copies of that same 1 MB message floating throughout the system and being attached to personal folders (PSTs). In an archiving system, the software would take those 2000 messages with the 1 MB attachment and create a single instance of that message in the archive with 2000 pointers. Moving to a single-instance archiving system can save large amounts of storage space. If done correctly, storage space can be conserved even when more messages are being saved. Consider whether an archiving solution works with different types of media that you may have now, or anticipate having over the next several years. Examples include disk-based solutions as well as tape libraries. You might also be looking at an overall ILM (information lifecycle management) solution, where you want to move less critical data to cheaper storage media over time but still have access to it. 10 IT Briefing:

14 Does the solution work with many vendors storage products, or is it tied to a specific vendor solution? If it is tied to a specific vendor, control can be lost for years. The best solution is to look at applications that are storage agnostic in that they work with most or all storage vendors. Usability Usability is another consideration when considering an archiving system usability on the IT side and on the end user side (see Figure 11). Can an end user search and retrieve archived messages from the user s own mailbox, or is IT support required? Obviously the advantage for the IT folks is that end-users do it, not bothering IT. Do end-users need to be trained on the new search and retrieval tools, or is it so commonsense that little or no training is required? Are there users who will need to search for and view archive messages from a web interface from outside the firewall? Laptop users are another consideration. Do they have a need to archive, or to gain access to archived messages when they are not linked to the system? Perhaps a user is on an airplane and is making full use of their Outlook mail. Can the user s archived messages be viewed locally? Consider searches: What additional search functions are needed? Should searches be based on any criteria other than delivery date, sender s name, and similar attributes? If so, this could require indexing the total message body, which most systems currently do. But perhaps there is a need to index attachments in order to provide a more powerful search. There may be a need to include proximity searches or searches on phrases within the or the attachment. Determine what is needed now and in the future. However, there is no need to consider features that will never be used. Security It is important to consider security concerns for archived messages and the archived message store (see Figure 12). Certain industries have regulations that specify the required levels of security. Consider whether there is a requirement to know who has viewed a message or attempted to move it or change it. This information may be required for litigation cases. Figure IT Briefing:

15 Figure 12 Will a proposed solution work with encryption? Companies that regularly use encrypted s need an archiving system that can handle encrypted messages. If encrypted is stored in the archive, will the necessary keys be available to decrypt the messages? Will search and audit functions work correctly? Additional Considerations When evaluating archiving systems, there are additional considerations that can be stated as questions (see Figure 13). Is there a need to archive instant messages as well as ? Some regulations, especially federal regulations, insist that if a system contains instant messages, they must be archived just like . Some of the vendors of archiving systems are resellers. If they are resellers, do they offer full first-line support? Will the support staff be available 24/7/365? Did the vendor develop the archiving product or are they reselling it? Many resellers have excellent support strategies that are sometimes even better than the manufacturer s strategies. Understanding the support strategies requires some research. Companies that are evaluating archiving systems should find out if a prospective vendor has reference installations that are similar to what the company s installation would look like. Can the vendor be contacted to discuss problems? How long has the vendor been in business? Is the archiving solution one of their primary businesses, or is it a side business? The archival market is not a mature market. It has only developed within the past three years, although some of the vendors have a longer history in other businesses. Therefore these issues such as talking to references, and looking into scalability tend to be more important in this area than when you are buying other types of products. Components and Costs When considering hardware and software components (see Figure 14), the first thing to look at is the archiving application. It is usually priced on a per-mailbox scheme. Prices can vary widely, depending on the kinds of features that you want to have. The fee is usually a one time fee, not an ongoing fee 12 IT Briefing:

16 Figure 13 Figure IT Briefing:

17 for in-house solutions. It can range anywhere from $10 or $12 to $45 per mailbox. The second component to look at is the archive server. Usually you do not need special super-powerful servers so a standard server will do just fine. There will be an optimum ratio of one archive server to a certain number of boxes, which will vary depending on message traffic, message size, the type of system and its version number. The ratio can vary widely from one archive server per 1,500 mailboxes all the way up to one archive server per 10,000 or 15,000 mailboxes. Storage requirements depend on traffic, size, and whether the majority of traffic is internal or external. They also depend on the number of carbon copies (CCs). The average number of CCs on an message will help determine the gain that can be obtained through single-instance storage. Most companies can repurpose existing storage resources for at least the initial period. Then characterize your traffic more, and start looking at the kinds of storage purchases that you put in over time. Evaluating Archive Systems: Critical Issues This document has presented a number of important factors to consider when evaluating archival systems. The most critical factors are shown in Figure 15. An understanding of these factors will help determine if any can be waived. The most important factor is scalability. An system that is not scalable should not be implemented, which is why this factor is rated so high. The impact of server availability is also high on the list. As important as it is to do archival backups, they cannot be implemented if day-to-day operations and server availability will be adversely affected. You can even have archiving bring down your server it has happened before. So it is very important to understand the archiving system you buy and how it may or may not impact server availability. The ability to support policy is another factor. You may need to support different data retention policies Figure IT Briefing:

18 for different departments, to comply with recordretention requirements or privacy laws. The fourth item on the list is cost. Organizations need to determine the cost impact how much they can afford to pay for software, hardware, and in some cases, outsourcing. What will be the monthly fee? Finally, what are the management requirements? How many resources will be required? How much maintenance will be associated with this? How much effort will be required to run the system? Your mileage is going to vary, but in general these are some of the critical issues that we see in terms of evaluating an archival system. Sample Project Plan Once a company decides to create an archiving system, it must take appropriate steps to execute the project. The following sections provide a sample project plan format that contains five phases. Phases 1 and 2 Phases 1 and 2 involve project planning and vendor evaluation (see Figure 16). In Phase 1, name a project manager and provide that person with the responsibility and the ability to get things done. Then, collect the system requirements. It is important to first understand the problem to be solved, and then understand all the things around it. All of the affected departments should be asked for their input, their concerns, and the kind of things for which they are looking. A requirements document that everybody can agree on should be created from that information. The final step in Phase 1 is to create an overall policy that includes usage policies and an retention policy. In Phase 2, evaluate the vendors. Which vendors will best fit the requirements determined in Phase 1? Vendors should be asked to provide references. Those references should be contacted, and in some Figure IT Briefing:

19 circumstances they should be visited. As mentioned earlier, there are 60 or 70 archiving vendors in business. The ones that seem to come closest to meeting the system requirements should be evaluated. After the evaluations are complete and the references have been checked, the top three vendors should be chosen to move into Phase 3. Phases 3, 4, and 5 Phases 3, 4, and 5 include pilot deployment, solution deployment, and end user training (see Figure 17). Phase 3 involves running the top three vendors solutions in a pilot in a closed system. Create a test plan and run the testing for as long as it takes to become comfortable with the software, whether it be 30 days, 60 days, or some other time period. Then, based on the requirements document that was created in Phase 1, rate the three systems and choose a vendor. Then move into Phase 4, in which the solution is deployed. It can take a lot of time and resources to get to the point where the system has been tested, runs correctly, and everybody is comfortable. In Phase 5, which is the last phase, educate the end users. They should be taught what has transpired, what is different, and what will need to be done differently. Communicate the new policies that were created. The system must be monitored on an ongoing basis to make sure that it meets the end users expectations. Provide feedback to the vendors to address any requirements that have not been met. Additional Best Practices Figure 18 and Figure 19 show some additional best practices for archiving. Create simple retention schedules, because elaborate schedules do not work (see Figure 18). The high watermark approach makes retention policy easier, and 45 page retention schedules do not work. So make the retention schedule simple. Ensure that policies are updated. Include a number of different stakeholders in the project, not just IT or compliance. Figure IT Briefing:

20 Figure 18 Figure IT Briefing:

21 To the extent possible, eliminate all the peopleoriented processes that make technology a big part of your solution. In case a discovery request is made, ensure that a mechanism is in place to stop destruction of , including rotating backup tapes. A company can get into a lot of trouble if it rotates backup tapes during a time that it had a regulatory or court order responsibility to save the . Limit the saved in employee folders (see Figure 19). We find that just finding that stuff can be very difficult. Ensure that policies can be supported in the real world. It is better to have no policy than one that people do not follow. Summary This document has provided reasons for archiving and methods for determining archiving requirements. It has discussed the advantages and disadvantages of two categories of archiving: in-house and hosted. It provided a sample project plan for an archiving implementation and followed that with some additional best practices. Additional Resources This section provides links to additional resources, including white papers and research reports (see Figure 20). It also contains an address for posing questions that are not addressed in the Common Questions described in this document. Figure IT Briefing:

22 Common Questions Question: Is it true that WORM must be used to store Sarbanes-Oxley-related s? Answer: Sarbanes-Oxley does not have a WORM requirement. The only regulation that specifically requires WORM is the SEC Rule 17a-4 and the derivative regulations. WORM is the type of media called Write Once, Read Many. Once the disc is written to, the contents cannot be changed. Question: We are in the middle of migrating to Exchange Should we implement our archival system before or after migration? Answer: Implementing an archiving solution before a migration tends to make migration easier and faster. Many vendors have white papers that they have written around why that is and how it is done. Question: If we start archiving all new on our system going forward, what do we do with old ? Do we have to save that too? Answer: It depends on whether you legally have to save it via regulation or whether your question is historical. If historical, then the old does not have to be saved in most cases. In certain cases it is not a good idea to save it. But it is relatively easy to save the old , depending on the archiving solution that is chosen and whether the vendor provides the tools to do it. It is usually a good thing because it provides a larger, searchable database of archiving messages. Question: We are having a hard time convincing management of the urgency of implementing an archiving plan. I do not think I want to invest the cash right now. Answer: With the exception of a few industries, litigation discovery tends to be a bigger issue than regulatory compliance. The best thing is to educate your management on some of the litigation practices out there. The fact is that they can probably go after your . You could face significant liability if you do not have that . First, remind management that there are regulations that apply to them, and they are not going to be compliant. Talk about how unprepared you would be if you did have to do a regulatory discovery, and how recovering from backup tapes may not be acceptable. The best thing to do is to try to educate them. Some of the white papers that were mentioned earlier have some good stories and good examples that can be used to educate senior management. Question: Is it easier to restore PST files than mailboxes? Answer: It is easier to find PST first. Usually it is in a relatively safe place. If an archiving solution is not already in place, and the PST is up to date, then the PST would be much easier than going to backup tapes to restore the mailbox. Question: What are the top five vendor archiving solutions on the market right now? Answer: This is a premature market. archiving needs to be broken down into three different categories. Some providers do all three. There are providers who create the software for in-house use, and there are those who create storage and hardware for inhouse use. The hosted solution is an emerging market in terms of the number of the suppliers who are able to do that. Companies such as FrontBridge and Fortiva are real leaders. There is a lot of consolidation going on in the archive software market. Clearly EMC, Veritas, and Hewlett-Packard have solutions, as do Zantaz, ilumin, and Open Text Ixos. Some of the major hardware players are Hewlett- Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, EMC, STK, and IBM. They are all on a network of plans. There are many specialty vendors that have components such as file compression. It is a fragmented market at this point. 19 IT Briefing:

23 Question: What is the recommended mailbox size for associates? Answer: If archival is implemented effectively, the limitation of the mailbox size can be removed, because it looks as if people have a mailbox of an infinite size. It has been referred to as the bottomless because the limit is never reached. In reality, these archival systems get moved out of the Exchange store onto some type of nearline or secondary media. In many cases, the user still thinks that messages are within the mailbox or on the Exchange store. People should get out of the business of policing mailbox size or policing folders and get into this idea of the bottomless mailbox. It tends to be easier and a lot more real world in terms of what people do. It touches a little bit on the policy issue, because when people are restricted from saving things, they end up driving underground archival, in which people save in places they should not. This is probably the worst thing that can happen in terms of archival solutions. About TechTarget We deliver the information IT pros need to be successful. TechTarget publishes targeted media that address your need for information and resources. Our network of industry-specific Web sites give enterprise IT professionals access to experts and peers, original content and link to relevant information from across the Internet. Our conferences give you access to vendor-neutral, expert commentary and advice on the issues and challenges you face daily. Practical technical advice and expert insights are distributed via more than 100 specialized newsletters, and our webcasts allow IT pros to ask questions of technical experts in real time. What makes us unique TechTarget is squarely focused on the enterprise IT space. Our team of editors and network of industry experts provide the richest, most relevant content to IT professionals. We leverage the immediacy of the Web, the networking and face-to-face opportunities of conferences, the expert interaction of webcasts and Web radio, the laser-targeting of newsletters and the richness and depth of our print media to create compelling and actionable information for enterprise IT professionals. For more information, visit Fortiva_07_2005_ IT Briefing: