Posted by Amy Dugdale on Wed, Jan 13, 2010 @ 03:53 PM
If the newly-formed, non-profit
Organization of Legal Professionals (OLP) has anything to say about it, those of us that work in
e-discovery may soon know. According to a recent Wisconsin Law Journal
article, the OLP is currently working to create "a certification exam on ‘core competencies' of e-discovery, including data collection, ethical considerations and an understanding of the 2006 changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [FRCP]." The exam is aimed at non-attorneys such as paralegals, IT vendors and consultants because they are the ones most often involved in the early stages of e-discovery.
However, the plan for this new exam is not without its detractors. Some in the legal industry believe such a certification could arm folks with a false sense of knowledge and security when it comes to e-discovery and the responsibilities it carries.
While I can't speak on behalf of paralegals, I will say that from the vendor perspective, I think it makes sense to carry such a certification as a way of proving that our solution is up to the task.
Posted by Joe Diamond on Fri, Jan 08, 2010 @ 05:37 PM
In an interesting survey conducted by United Kingdom-based
Telehouse, 31 percent of respondents indicated that cloud computing is driving an increased use of data center capacity. With
Gartner forecasting that the cloud computing market could reach a global value of $150 billion by 2013, Telehouse found that more than 80 percent of respondents predicted that their data center requirements will continue to grow in the coming years.
As legal requirements in the United Kingdom (and the United States alike) continue to expand, so does the amount of data businesses are required to retain for electronic discovery and potential litigation. In addition, according to a study by leading market intelligence firm IDC, email and electronic documents are a primary factor for the increase in the amount of data stored on servers - which happens to be located within data centers.
Michelle Reid, director of sales and marketing for Telehouse, comments:
"The results of our survey indicate that demand for data centre capacity will continue to increase over the next five years, fuelled by SaaS and cloud computing, but we should not underestimate the future impact of governance and the pressure it will put on capacity, too."
We couldn't agree more. As our lives become ever more digital both professionally and personally, our reliance on data centers is only going to increase and it's inevitable that data stores will continue to grow with it. We're watching this trend evolve first hand as more organizations move away from on-premise email archiving solutions in order to take advantage of our hosted archiving's unlimited storage and retention.
Posted by Amy Dugdale on Tue, Jan 05, 2010 @ 08:02 PM
First things first - happy 2010 to all our readers!
Without question, Twitter was a big topic of conversation and debate in 2009. Late last year, a WSJ writer published an article on "Why Email No Longer Rules." Over 200 folks commented on the article and many declared their continued allegiance to email. Osterman Research even rang in with survey results that revealed that 94% of respondents believe email is still their most valuable tool for getting work done. Add me to the hand raisers on that one - do you know how I monitor Twitter? I get TweetBeeps emailed to me - this method also ensures that I can go into my archive and search for old tweets in my Personal Archive folder whenever I want.
What's my point here? I'll cut to the chase. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of us around here and with 2009 coming to a close, we decided to do our own informal research on email vs. Twitter. Our research uncovered an interesting fact - guess what folks tweet about on a regular basis? Email. Yup, that's right. When you get right down to it, people have a relationship with email - sometimes they love it, sometimes they hate it, but at the very root - they still NEED it and tweet about it.
Without further ado, here are our picks for the top 10 email-related tweets last month:
1. zappify: first gmail is down, then they're taking down the bay bridge... what next?
2. cdbnyc: No, but seriously work email. I will kill you if you freeze. KILL YOU. I want to finish & go home, not sit here waiting for you to function.
3. GordonJewett: Got the nicest email I've ever received today. Should help offset the angry emails from clients ;)
4. invig: Deleted an email (to trash), tried to undo the delete (from trash), exchange makes the email disappear. Good work Microsoft.
5. FawnDoo: Ah, Outlook. You're showing me my inbox, I ask to see the sent items folder. It's only fair that you crash at my unreasonable demand.
6. nilicule: At least I've narrowed down the reason for my system crashes: pressing 'reply' in Outlook.
7. linuxchiq: How should i deal with email overload? One email at a time? Declare bankruptcy? I hate email. =(
8. Toberina: Do they know its Christmas? My email server clearly does as it just decided to stop working. Aaahh!
9. Lesilieburleigh: Ok, I went 4 days without email and thought it was liberating. Today my server is down and I am having a panic attack!
10. VeronicaLudwig: Is gmail down for anyone else or do they just hate me again today?
Posted by Nick Mehta on Thu, Dec 24, 2009 @ 12:07 PM
I am the biggest sucker for the holidays you'll ever meet. I love everything about the season - from cheesy holiday songs to sappy holiday movies to the love that we see all around us. Not to mention lots of football!
In that spirit, I would like to thank all of the members of our LiveOffice "family" that have supported us this year:
- Most importantly, thank you to our clients, who partner with us, give us their trust and help us to evolve.
- Thank you too to our partners across the world who helped us to grow so much this year.
- Thank you to our vendors and suppliers who allow us to deliver and improve our services for our clients.
- Thank you to our investors and board members, whose advice has helped us thrive this year, despite the global challenges.
- Thank you to our employees, whose dedication and passion is inspirational to me.
- Finally, thank you to all of the families of our LiveOffice family, without whose support none of this would be possible.
And as a true holiday sap, I am excited to have my daughter finally at the age (3 1/2 now and nicknamed "The Chief") where she can enjoy some of the holidays traditions with me.
In particular, we started watching all of my favorite holiday movies together, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
It seems The Chief has fallen in love with the Grinch, going from running out the room the first time he came on the screen to now wanting to watch it literally every day. As I told my friend, I love watching The Grinch once a year but at viewing number 15, it gets a little repetitive. :)
That being said, my wife astutely observed that The Grinch probably captures the essence of what is amazing about the holidays better than any other movie or song.
"Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer.
Cheer to all Whos far and near.
Christmas Day is in our grasp so long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas while we stand.
Heart to heart and hand in hand."
Well said, Dr. Seuss.
Happy holidays to you and your loved ones!
Posted by Amy Dugdale on Mon, Dec 14, 2009 @ 08:34 PM
Several outlets reported today that 22 million missing emails from the Bush administration have been found. Computer technicians have spent the last several months searching for the messages. Interestingly, it now seems that the messages were originally "mislabeled and effectively lost."
Being that I work at an email archiving company, that last statement is the equivalent of nails on a chalk board. This is exactly the reason organizations need an archiving solution - 1) since all messages are indexed and stored, it doesn't matter how they are labeled since you are able to quickly search the entire archive based on keywords and then filter down to the needle in the haystack 2) messages can be easily tagged and labeled (if you so desire) in the archive so that they are quickly recoverable at any time.
I blogged on this one back in May and this is just the latest in the controversy surrounding "the failure by the Bush White House to install a properly working electronic record keeping system." Stay tuned for the threequel.
Posted by Joe Diamond on Wed, Dec 02, 2009 @ 07:14 PM
When
Judas Priest released their
Breaking the Law single in 1980, they couldn't have possibly envisioned that sending a nasty email would eventually become a viable song verse. Then again, email, at the time, was still in its infancy.
You can, apparently, be convicted of a crime for sending someone a nasty email. Just ask Darren Drahota, a college student who was charged with disturbing the peace and fined $250 in Lancaster County for sending abusive emails to his former political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Bill Avery, the recipient of Drahota's emails and now a Nebraska State Senator (Lincoln), contacted the police back in 2006. Nebraska Assistant Attorney General George R. Love referred to the emails as "profane, indecent and abusive." He added, "In no sense is that type of language protected speech."
Now it's up to the Nebraska Supreme Court to make a decision in a hearing later this week. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA and a prominent blogger, is representing Drahota pro bono.
Sheesh. You should see my inbox. It's got flaming emails aplenty. I need new friends. At least, now, I can threaten them with legal recourse. ;-)
Posted by Stephanie O'Neill on Tue, Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:55 PM
Have you heard the one about the couple who crashed
President Obama's first state dinner at the
White House? Sorry, there's not really a punch line - at least not yet. But I have to say, I find it extremely hard to believe anyone, no matter who they are, could successfully crash an event at the White House - at least not without insider help. I've actually been in a room with a former president (I imagine the security is much tighter for a sitting president), where the
Secret Service outnumbered the guests 2:1 (well, it seemed like it), and those guys are serious business. There's no way they'd let someone slip through the cracks because it was a rainy evening. Seriously, what PR pro came up with that excuse?
Now you might be wondering what the point is, especially since I am writing a software-as-a-service blog post. As I have been watching this story unfold in the media with a lot of speculation, I have been waiting with bated breath for the big "E" to surface - email. Much to my glee, it did last night, and I can't wait until that evidence comes to light.
I've said it more than once, and here I am saying it again: we live in an electronic age, and email will come back to bite you. It remains to be seen whether Tareq and Michaele Salahi, senior Pentagon official Michele Jones, the Secret Service or someone else is to blame for this apparent security breach, but yet again, email appears to be the smoking gun. And if the powers that be at the White House and Pentagon were using a cloud-based email archiving solution, this he said, she said case could have been put to rest before we finished digesting our Thanksgiving dinners.
Posted by Joe Diamond on Wed, Nov 25, 2009 @ 07:47 PM
What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Scratch? Roll over and say hello to your significant other? Pay a visit to the restroom for some good ol' tooth brushin'? Not me. First thing I do is hit up my BlackBerry to check what's happened in my email world overnight. With the
LiveOffice Personal Archive for BlackBerry app, which we just
announced this week, I've now got even more going on in my BlackBerry and it's pretty cool. This app means I no longer have to rely on a personal computer to access my unlimited email archive.
Check out what this app does for me:
- I can perform advanced searches and conduct self-service restores on messages themselves, right from my BlackBerry
- I don't have to fret over email downtime since my unlimited archive lets me compose, reply to and send messages in real time when my primary email platform isn't available
What more can a BlackBerry email addict ask for? If you're looking for me while we're out for the Thanksgiving holiday, you can find me... uh, anywhere... searching through my archive from the palm of my hand.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Posted by Amy Dugdale on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 @ 07:25 PM
Like Nick, I love college and pro football (despite being in
8th place in my fantasy league right now) so hopefully you don’t
mind me indulging in some football analogies tonight. Dean recently
blogged about the pitfalls of archiving solutions that won’t let you take
your data with you when you change platforms (for the record, that’s most
archiving solutions right now). I call it the “Blind Side” effect in archiving –
you’ve done all your due diligence on moving to a new email platform and right
as you go to throw the project’s winning touchdown – BAM! Out of nowhere, it
hits you like a ton of bricks (I’m thinking Refrigerator
Perry here) – you want to move your email to the cloud, but your archive
can’t go with you. Or you want to move to a new on-premise platform that isn’t
supported by your existing archive.
The good news
is that now we’ve got your archiving blind side - think of us like Dan Dierdorf. Not
sure what you are going to do with your email platform now that Exchange 2010
is available? Still crunching the numbers on whether or not you should move your email to the cloud? We’ve
got you covered.
Start archiving now and we’ll help you transition
from your current solution to a new platform when the time is right.
Play of the week – get a 100 percent portable archive with
us and protect your blind side.
Posted by Amy Dugdale on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 @ 07:53 PM
My stepdad owns a small manufacturing company in Chicago and he has been dragged into the digital era kicking and screaming for two decades. About ten years ago, he broke down and got email accounts for his management team - he does not like email, nor does he trust it (despite his stepdaughter working at an email company). You can imagine the conversations on that one over the years ... in fact here is my recollection of one of these conversations about a year ago:
Me: Who do you use for email hosting these days? [I'm working at an email company, I need to know this]
Him: [Insert name of Chicago-only hosting company that I can't remember.]
Me: How much are you paying? [anticipated answer: $8-10/mailbox/month]
Him: I'm not sure, about $25 per account per month.
Me: [I try to hide my shock - but can't help myself. I am stunned.] Why are you using this company and paying that much?
Him: They are local. If there's a problem, I can go and knock on their door.
Me: [Speechless plus this is a debate I will lose]
But thankfully, I am speechless no more! I have a solution for him and lots of other businesses who want to have a contingency plan if their cloud email provider (or on-premise mail server) has a hiccup. Last week we announced enhancements to our CloudMerge technology that give users of cloud-based email, like my stepdad, peace of mind by ensuring 24-7-365 availability of their email, whether their primary email solution fails or during a planned migration. You can think of it like Geico for your email (or a standby mailbox if you're tech'y) - you can use our technology to send and receive messages via our archive, regardless of the status of your primary email platform.
So there it is - I don't have to hear about $25 email hosting at Thanksgiving this year. Stephen - with the money I'm saving you, I think it's pizza time for us at Lou Malnati's.