Archiving products and services are evolving quickly, prompted by storage management, regulatory compliance, and e-discovery needs. Many products have been installed, but they are subject to replacement because of changing corporate requirements and changing vendor technology. Evaluating products is hard, too; many organizations don’t know where to start.

The Ferris Archiving Strategy Service

Ferris Research helps you make sense of what’s happening and make the right decisions. Our Archiving Strategy Service includes:

• A custom presentation on archiving trends, product/service selection criteria, and implementation issues. This is an interactive session designed to help formulate your technology and business planning.
• A daily news feed (also available in weekly and monthly digests) covering archiving-related news.
• Regular commentaries on archiving developments.
• Networking with other organizations of similar size that are considering the same issues.
• Results from the Ferris survey of archiving products.
• Up to two days of custom consulting from Ferris Research on relevant topics, such as:
  • Your technology roadmap
  • Whether to continue using your existing archiving product
  • Developing an RFP
  • Evaluating responses to your RFP
  • The strengths and weaknesses of different products
  • Issues that arise when migrating between archiving solutions
  • Complementary functionality to seek; e.g., file archiving, instant messaging archiving, SharePoint archiving, backup, e-discovery, and data leak prevention
  • Compliance issues and policies
  • Legal and e-discovery issues
  • Cost of in-house vs. external e-discovery
  • Retention policies
  • Whether to use the archiving capabilities of a spam/malware control service
• Unlimited short email or phone questions and communications

This service is suitable for corporate IT professionals and costs $15,500 annually. We also offer a formal archiving strategy review, including on-site meetings, and a custom report on your options and recommended direction. Prices start at $60,000.

Vendor Option

A version of this service is also available for vendors of archiving products and services. Topics include NDA-based discussion of:

• Product planning and marketing
• Product architectures and key technical decisions
• Adjusting to Exchange 2010 native storage archiving
• Competitive strengths and weaknesses
• Customer satisfaction levels compared with competitors’
• Investment levels (e.g., number of developers, QC, tech comm, and sales specialists) relative to the rest of the market and key competitors
• Whether to expand laterally (e.g., cloud archiving into on-premises and vice versa, or storage archiving into compliance and vice versa)
• Who is targeting what niche markets and doing well

Unlimited briefings, press quotes, and reviews of outbound sales and marketing materials are also provided. The annual subscription cost is as follows:

• Up to 100 staff, includes up to three days of custom consulting: $19,500
• 101 to 500 staff, includes up to four days of custom consulting: $24,500
• More than 500 staff, includes up to five days of custom consulting: $29,500 per business unit

Consulting Team

Members of the Ferris team include:

• David Ferris, who has assessed email systems since he published his first book on the subject in 1991.
• David Sengupta, a Microsoft Exchange Server MVP since 1998. His expertise includes archiving, regulatory compliance, legal discovery, and enterprise content management.
• Nick Shelness, former Lotus CTO and Lotus and IBM fellow, who provides a deep understanding of Microsoft, Google, and IBM technologies and directions.
• Bob Spurzem, who specializes in email archiving and data protection solutions for Microsoft Exchange. He has held product marketing positions at Legato, Mimosa, and Veritas.

For Further Information

For more information, contact David Ferris at +1 415 367 3436, or david.ferris@ferris.com.