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• Limited human involvement. Once configured, the machine does all the heavy lifting. Potentially all inbound, outbound and internal messages can be processed automatically.

• Consistent decisions. Assuming the rules don't change, the computer will be faithful in applying the same classifications to like messages without deviation. However, some systems employ a kind of learning or adapting logic that, in some way or another, bases current decisions on past results. While some inconsistency may be evident early on, the intent is to make these computers more accurate at classifying messages over time.

• Computers can't think. They only do what they are told. This leads to various degrees of accuracy when classifying messages based purely on content or addresses, even when sophisticated and expensive learning systems are employed.

• People can reason. Presumably the message author can make the best determination as to the nature of the message and, therefore, what classifications it needs. Or, if the message arrived unclassified from an external sender, the recipient may be able to make that determination.

• Increased workload. Besides additional and on-going training, the additional work on the author's part to think about and apply classifications—admittedly slight for a single message—can add up when multiplied over hundreds and thousands of message over time.

• Inconsistencies. Different people, and even the same person at different times, may create decisions about two messages that should be classified the same. This can muddy the waters, as it were, when trying to manage the messages later as a group of a given type.

The difference between email archiving and email journaling can be confusing. What is the purpose of each?  Are both necessary to implement in your email retention plan?  Take a look at this article written by Grant Lindsay, Product Manager at Sherpa Software, to gain a better understanding of archiving and journaling and the benefits of each.

No doubt you’ve heard of this thing called cloud computing. It’s all the rage. Everyone’s doing it. Or are they? They must be. The blogs and articles I’ve been reading are all saying how any second now it’s going to see exponential growth (ie the hockey stick graph). If you can’t tell from my tone, I have my doubts. I think it will take more than just outsourcing for that kind of growth to happen.

First let me say, I’m not a skeptic. Any time the major IT industry players make a multi-billion dollar bet they usually either see something coming or by sheer force of dollars and marketing make it happen. So if you are a skeptic, you had better get used to hearing about cloud computing. Having said that, it does beg the question, how is this push to host IT services different than what’s been offered in the past? After all, if I wanted to host my company or application in the cloud I could have done it 15 years ago.

What is different this time around is the ease of integration. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM and others are all going beyond just moving the boxes from your data center to theirs. They have invested heavily in building development frameworks on which you can write an application that is truly cloud based. In other words, they are trying to change the WAY we develop applications, not just where we run them. That’s a significant point and will probably play a big part in when the graph points skyward.

In my opinion, as a pure “move it to the cloud because it will be cheaper” play the uptake will probably continue at the same pace as today. The bend in the curve will only happen when a significant number of new applications are built natively for the cloud or leverage cloud horsepower. That may not be as far off as you think, but don’t expect to be rewriting your back office payroll application. What’s the point, it works now. Would it work any better if it ran somewhere else?
 
I suspect that it will be ability to “rent a super computer” that will truly bend the curve. Ask yourself this: if I had a super computer what would I do with it? Not sure? Don’t worry, most people, even IT professionals would probably have a similar reaction. However we have all grown accustomed to instant results at our finger tips and that kind of response doesn’t come cheap. If you are Google it takes millions of servers grinding away, indexing data to make that happen. And that is fine if you’re a search engine company, but what if you’re just a 100 person widget maker? What would you do with a super computer? The answer isn’t obvious even to the IT department of that company, but it’s simply this: time = money.

Fast forward 10 years into the future and let’s see what ACME Widget Manufacturing is doing. Engineers at ACME are working on next year’s widget. Each time they make a tweak to the design, the CAD program they are using instantly returns a series of results from thousands of tests. What used to take 5 minutes of number crunching happens in 5 seconds and not just because computers in the future will be faster. It’s because the CAD application uses a cloud service provider as a super computer. ACME pays their service provider 25 cents so that an engineer can get back the results in 5 seconds rather than 5 minutes. If ACME drops that service, the CAD program goes back to local calculations and the engineers wait 5 minutes. In order to stay competitive and get their product out on time, ACME must use a super computer even if they only rent it. In fact their IT department isn’t really involved (except for connectivity). The CAD program is written and supported by a 3rd party and the bill for the cloud services goes directly to the accounting department (along with the phone, rent, electric and other bills).

In my opinion, when programs and services start to add a “calculate in the cloud” option to their offerings, that is when cloud will truly skyrocket.

Tell me what you think?
 

Over the years, we've collected advice and tips from both Sherpa Software's Discovery Attender team and key customers for best practices in running searches and producing results. Whether you're using one of Sherpa's tools or another ediscovery solution, you may find these suggestions helpful:

1) Plan before searching

• Search a small data set before running a complete search over multiple data stores. It may take more time upfront, but you will save time and hassle in the long run.
• Iron out any difficulties with file permissions or criteria.
• Identify false positives and causes for them.
• Estimate the size of your result set. If you anticipate more than 250,000 results, break up your search into smaller, logical pieces. It may be possible to append new results to an existing results set.
• Get feedback from the sample result set and test again before committing to an entire data set.

• Use any available syntax checking function for long search expressions or confusing word lists.
• For optimal performance, keep the keyword list less than 250 words or phrases per search. If your list is longer, break it up over multiple searches of less than 250 words. Again, if necessary, it may be possible to append new results to an existing results set.
• When applicable, refine the search to include only documents created within a specific time frame.

• Do not try to eliminate data in the main responsive search. Move the data as a further search of the results. This will clarify your responsive search while providing a separate 'privileged' data set for production.
• Use proximity searching for names in the body of documents. If you are searching for Jane Doe, it may appear as 'Jane Doe,' 'Doe, Jane,' or 'Jane B. Doe.' In Discovery Attender for Notes, for example, a Custom search using 'Jane SENTENCE Doe' will capture all of these instances.

• If one is available, engage the online Help database.
• Use the Forums to post questions and get advice.
• See if your vendor offers any web-based training that can be tailored to your specific needs.

Many of these tips are common knowledge, but they often come from learning things the hard way. Plan carefully, don't rush and be sure to understand the process. Don't take the ediscovery compliance process lightly - there may be alot at stake in the success of your search.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Sherpa Software booth at this year's Midwest Lotus User Group Conference. We had a great time interacting with you and hope that we were able to provide you with valuable information and solutions for your domino server software challenges. Each visitor to our table was entered for a chance to win a free Amazon Kindle, which was drawn today. Congratulations to the winner, Jim Darrow. Enjoy your gift from Sherpa!
 

The recipes went from bad to ugly in a matter of minutes and brought me to this site.  Included are a few food combinations that will either turn your stomach or make you run out to find the ingredients. Let us know what you think!

• Maple Bacon Donuts
•  Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger
• Bacon Ice Cream
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie
  

When Sherpa Software attended Microsoft Tech-Ed in June, it was clear many attendees were trying to get a handle on the information management challenges associated with cloud computing. Whether you view the cloud as hype or hope, you can't afford to ignore it when selecting a platform for future development and deployment.

With that in mind, the Sherpa Exchange team has been spending a lot of time helping partners (and customers) with an interest in utilizing cloud-based services for email data storage. Since many cloud based solutions work by forwarding information from Exchange into their repositories, it is relatively easy to 'flip the switch' and start populating a database in the cloud from a particular start date. 

However, it turns out ingesting historical email into a cloud based platform is a bit trickier. While importing PST data is straight forward, finding that data can be quite a challenge. As it turns out, Mail Attender for Exchange is a pretty handy tool for facilitating your PST migration to the cloud. Mail Attender's desktop agent will automatically scan for PST files on a workstation, then report that information back to the administrator console. Once the PST's are located, they may be scanned to establish the data owner and a Mail Attender rule may be applied to export PST data. Since Mail Attender offers a selection of over 70 different conditions to select messages and a corresponding number of actions to manipulate that data, your rules can get very specific. 

For example a rule like:

"Select every message from the Inbox folder that is less than three years old, and has an attachment, then copy that message to a PST file on a network share, and delete the original"

This rule can easily be created in Mail Attender and pushed automaticaly to each workstation. Trying to apply that same logic to 3,000 desktop computers manually could easily take months of work. If you are considering a move to the cloud, give some thought to your legacy email migration plans.  The time spent investigating some tools, could save you time, money and frustration! 

To learn more about migrating legacy data into the cloud using Mail Attender, contact Sherpa Software.

Goldman Sachs recently made headlines by announcing a new policy to eliminate profanity from its internal email correspondence.  This policy was the direct result of a business-wide ediscovery compliance review triggered from a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiry.  The investigation produced, among other things, rather salty emails which were then broadcast at a U.S. Senate hearing for all to see.  Goldman took bold actions to make an example out of those faulty individuals and to prevent such inappropriate emails from being sent in the future. Whether or not Goldman's new compliance email policy will prevent similar embarrassments is still a matter of debate. However, it is important to know how and why some companies go to great lengths to police their email and other electronic communications.   

Sherpa Software’s Archive Attender for Exchange was recently named the second runner-up in the Email Archiving category of the WindowsNetworking.com Readers’ Choice Awards. WindowsNetworking.com conducts monthly polls to determine which product visitors to the site prefer. Visitors vote for their favorite products in each respective category, and the products that receive the most votes are recognized. Sherpa is honored to have received this recognition, and would like to thank all those who took the time to vote for Archive Attender for Exchange. 

To find out more about Archive Attender for Exchange visit:  http://sherpasoftware.com/microsoft-exchange-products/archive-attender.shtml

Sherpa Software is excited to have well-known industry veteran, Gregg Eldred, join the Sherpa family to lead the expansion of Sherpa’s Professional Services. Gregg joins Sherpa from NextStep Technologies, LLC, a provider of electronic solutions to help companies extend their investment in Lotus Notes Domino, Domino server software, Workplace, and WebSphere. With more than twenty years experience, Gregg is a sought-after speaker, a consistent contributor to industry publications, and a thought-leader in the Lotus Notes blogging community. As a Lotus Certified Professional in Administration, Gregg focuses on Lotus Domino Administration; however he also administers, installs, and upgrades Lotus Sametime, Lotus Foundations, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and Lotus Traveler.

Kevin Ogrodnik, President of Sherpa Software, recently commented on Gregg’s leadership and anticipated contributions to the company. “The leadership Gregg has shown in the Notes and Domino community makes him the right fit for our recently expanded team.  As demand for our services continues to grow, Gregg will provide the leadership to ensure that we are ready to deliver on a wide variety of service engagements to help businesses of all sizes meet their email management needs.”

Gregg will be leading a team of experienced professionals which assists customers with the evaluation and implementation of Sherpa’s archiving and ediscovery solutions, by offering services such as proof concepts, product installation and configuration, customized on-site training, email migration service, company policy implementations for email management and compliance requests.

 To find out more about the professional services Sherpa offers visit http://sherpasoftware.com/customer-support/professional-services.shtml. 

Rick Wilson, Exchange Product Manager at Sherpa Software, sat down with Windows IT Pro Editorial Director Michelle Crockett at Teched 2010 to discuss how Sherpa is adapting its products to accommodate the latest trends in mail archiving software and ediscovery solutions.  In this video Rick offers advice on migrating to Exchange 2010 and describes how Sherpa’s products have been packed with functionality to overcome the information management challenges administrators will be facing with this upgrade. Rick also addresses the common question, “which Sherpa product best fits this size company?” To hear Rick’s answer, and other Sherpa updates, watch now! 

Sherpa Software's Tech-ed booth not only provided visitors with information about our compliance and email solutions but also with the chance to win a $1,000 Best Buy gift card. Each visitor to our booth was entered into the drawing, and one lucky name was randomly selected. Congratulations, Anthony Brassfield. Check out what he bought!
 

Sherpa Software is honored to be named to the Pittsburgh 100 for the second time in three years. This ranking, created by the Pittsburgh Business Times, recognizes the city’s fastest growing, privately held companies. Rank criteria include percent sales growth and employee growth. Sherpa is proud to have received this recognition and foresees continuous rapid growth in the future fueled by both market demand and employee innovation. Thank you, Pittsburgh Business Times, for acknowledging the success of our company. 

Thousands of regulations set in place over the past few years require organizations to retain their electronically stored information for compliance reasons. While some of this information is located in centralized data stores and is easily accessible, research reveals that a large portion of this information is not centrally stored. According to the whitepaper, “Solving PST Management Problems in Microsoft Exchange Environments,” published by Osterman Research, 75% of information that email users need to do their jobs is stored in email, making PST files and other message stores an important source of corporate data, and an information management priority.

While organizations understand that PST file management is a necessity, managing these files is not an easy task, as PST files present organizations with a variety of challenges. These challenges include: 

PST data is not easily accessible: PST files are located on desktops, file servers, and laptop machines. IT staff may be able to locate and search PST files to collect this information; however, they must search through all of these locations, and have no way of knowing if they have found all of the local PST files. This proves to be a long and tedious process, and unfortunately may be non-comprehensive.

Enforcing corporate data retention and deletion policies are difficult: If information is not centrally stored, the IT staff is unable to monitor activity. Employees are able to delete information without IT staff knowing, and there is no record indicating that this data ever existed. 

Data compression is not automatic: PST files are insufficient storage depositories and need to be compacted to maximize storage value. PST compression is not done automatically and relying on manual methods to compress pst files requires time and will not provide the maximum level of compression.

Organizations lack information about their infrastructure: Organizations using only native Exchange tools are not provided with information about PST files.   Therefore, they are unsure as to where they are located, the types of data they contain, and how much compaction they require. 

Non-corporate data adds to storage requirements:   Backup applications backup all information stored in PST files, including non-corporate information. This additional information adds to the load on the backup application. 

Until PST files are managed, organizations will continue to lose corporate information, and potentially fail to comply with regulations. Native Exchange tools do not have the capability of successfully and comprehensively managing these files and therefore relying solely on these PST tools may be putting your organization at risk. 

To read more about PSTs and the challenges they present read “Solving PST Management Problems in Microsoft Exchange Environments”: http://sherpasoftware.com/customer-support/white-papers.shtml.

To learn more about Sherpa Software’s email management solutions including their PST tools and how they can help overcome information management challenges visit: http://www.sherpasoftware.com/solutions/solutions.shtml.

According to a recent survey of 1,000 Exchange administrators, reported in our latest whitepaper, “Waiting to Upgrade: Understanding Archiving and Ediscovery Limitations in Exchange 2010,” only 30% of respondents plan to upgrade to Exchange 2010 immediately. With the promise of new and exciting features, why are Exchange administrators not eager to upgrade? 

One of the primary advantages Microsoft cites in making an upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2010 is the inclusion of features to help administrators implement archiving and ediscovery solutions.

The updated version stores archives using a dual-mailbox approach in which an administrator is given the ability to create an archive mailbox associated with the user’s primary database. The administrator can then create policies to automatically move items based on their age to the archive mailbox, or users can move items themselves. A new Exchange Search feature enables organizations to perform indexed searches across personal mailboxes and grants certain individuals the capability to perform searches across multiple accounts for ediscovery compliance purposes. 

While these updates are progressive steps towards satisfying companies' archiving and ediscovery needs, there are several functional limitations that exist, and should be considered before utilizing Exchange 2010 as your only ediscovery solution, or before leaving your third-party vendor.

Some of these limitations include: 

CAL Restrictions: The Exchange Enterprise Client Access License is required to use archive mailboxes.

Lack of Tiered Storage Capability: An archive mailbox cannot exist in a different database than the one where the user’s primary mailbox is located. This essentially disallows having the archive mailbox on a slower tier of disk or slower server, greatly diminishing the benefit of having an archive mailbox.

No Offline Support: Outlook must be directly connected to the Exchange Server to view and act on items in the Archive Mailbox. If Outlook is running offline, it cannot access archived data.

Default Search Filters Limited: Standard Microsoft Office formats can be indexed by Exchange 2010, but there is limited support for other common formats such as the popular PDF file format. By default, the content of PDF messages is subsequently unsearchable.

No Public Folder Search: Organizations with a significant investment in public folders will find they cannot search across public folder data using the native Exchange Search.

These limitations suggest that archiving and ediscovery should not be the main factors to consider when making the decision to upgrade. In addition, hidden costs such as paying for enterprise CALS (if you are not currently using them) and upgrading all computers to Office 2010, which is necessary for archiving functionality, can make this update quite costly while providing only a limited archiving and ediscovery solution. Organizations can satisfy their ediscovery and archiving needs with older versions of Exchange combined with third-party vendor tools, which provide more capabilities, sometimes at a lesser price. 

To read more about archiving and ediscovery limitations in Microsoft Exchange 2010 download “Waiting to Upgrade: Understanding Archiving and Ediscovery Limitations in Microsoft Exchange 2010”: http://sherpasoftware.com/customer-support/white-papers.shtml.

To learn about Sherpa Software’s ediscovery and archiving solutions visit: http://sherpasoftware.com/solutions/solutions.shtml.

Sherpa Software has two new offerings for customers or partners using cloud-based email archiving systems. Through partnerships with hosted archiving vendors, end-users are now provided with an automated way to transfer their legacy data into the cloud. 

These offerings include: 

•  An automated way to locate PST file folders in a distributed computing environment and import the legacy email data into a centralized cloud-based repository.  
•  A tool to convert email file formats into the required format for ingestion into a hosted email archiving vendor’s cloud based storage repository, ensuring all email originating in a specific environment can be converted into the cloud system’s required file format so that important data is not lost. 

Dave Goldberg, Director of Product Management with Mimecast, commented on its experience with these features: 

"We've noticed increasing interest from our customers wanting to move all of their legacy data into the cloud," said Dave Goldberg, Director of Product Management with Mimecast, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company focused on unified email management. "Sherpa Software has been instrumental in helping us to easily migrate our customers' existing data into our SaaS archive repository. In some cases the customers' data must be converted to a specific file format. Partnering with Sherpa has allowed us to better serve these customers with an automated, easy to use tool that can be administered by our staff or the client's staff with little to no support needed."

 To read the entire article please visit: http://sherpasoftware.com/about-us/press-releases/pr_intro-cloud-services.shtml

Sherpa continues to work with multiple hosted email archiving vendors to migrate end-user data into the cloud and appreciates the support and trust of its partners.  For more information about Sherpa's services, please visit www.sherpasoftware.com.