Archiving products for email have been around for a while now, and customers often need to consolidate archiving systems, or move from one archiving platform to another. This is due to:

• Mergers or reorganizations
• The need for more modern technology

These migrations are usually painful, time-consuming, and costly. The easiest way is to export all the data to PST, and then import it back into the new system.

Now you can buy an off-the-shelf product that can help you migrate your archived data to a new system. TransVault is a new product being offered by Essential Computing. It supports Symantec Enterprise Vault, Autonomy/Zantaz EAS, Open Text eCONserver for Exchange and PST files, and presumably more will follow.

… Bob Spurzem

In another high profile case, federal prosecutors are using email in their case against senior managers of Bear Stearns. Two things are interesting here.

First is that the email in question is from a personal email account. Work email is understood to be the company’s property, but now it seems personal email is also subject to discovery. If you recall, this was also the case in the recent White House scandal where personal email accounts were used to communicate sensitive information.

The second interesting fact revealed in this case is that just because the accused wrote something in an email, it does not necessarily imply guilt. This article states that, “there is no guarantee that cases that rely on email exchanges and unclear states of mind result in jail time. In one prominent case involving email exchanges, for example, charges were ultimately dropped against Frank Quattrone, the high-level Credit Suisse banker accused of interfering with a government investigation.”

The lesson learned is be careful what you put in an email because it may come back to haunt you.

… Bob Spurzem

An important feature of email archiving is called “stubbing.” This is a process whereby an entire email or just the attachment is removed from Exchange and replaced with a “stub” file. When the user opens the message in Outlook, the stub file retrieves the archived email and/or attachment from the archive. The benefit is reduced Exchange storage.

Microsoft is now recommending against the use of stubbing:

• Search problems. If you retain months (and years) of stub files, several hundred thousand messages will be processed in this way. The probability of successfully locating a specific message with Outlook search is greatly reduced when you do not have a significant portion of the message body available. Users need to go to the archive multiple times to find a desired message. Third-party email archiving solutions solve the problem of mailbox size, but they reduce search efficiency and increase user time performing multiple searches.
• Performance. If folders contain a large number of messages, even ones just consisting of stubs, Outlook slows down a lot.

Microsoft therefore recommends that third-party email archiving solutions be configured to move email content completely out of the mailbox without retaining stub files in the mailbox. For more information, read this TechNet article. The information targets Exchange 2007, but it is also relevant for Exchange 2003 systems considering third-party email archiving.

… Bob Spurzem

Common sense tells us that large mailboxes will slow the performance of Exchange Server. But are you aware that item count is the real nemesis of Exchange performance? We recently found this TechNet article, which does an excellent job of explaining the difference between mailbox size and item count — and explains the corresponding impact on Exchange Server performance.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the article that makes a key point about item count:

Understand that most performance issues are not the result of large mailbox size (defined as a mailbox that is larger than 2GB), but instead the number of items in the folder or folders that are being accessed on the server. Having many items in a folder adversely affects performance because operations in those folders will take longer. In particular, performance is largely influenced by the number of items in the critical path folders: Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, and Sent Item folder.

We urge everyone who is responsible for Exchange Server to carefully read and understand this article. We live in a time where rapid mailbox growth is the norm, and it is critical for the successful management of Exchange that we manage email storage growth with a complete understanding of how Exchange works.

… Bob Spurzem

I just returned from my business trip to Japan. Like many travelers, I was dismayed by the maze of communication technologies necessary to be in touch with business contacts, friends, and family during my stay.

On the flight home, I dreamed about the perfect worldwide communication technology:

• No expensive long-distance phone charges
• No confusing country and access codes
• A single identity for phone, email, and IM
• Anytime access (e.g., desktop, laptop, smartphone)
• Presence detection so friends and associates can know when I am sleeping
• Anywhere access (e.g., airports, hotels, taxis, trains, etc.)
• A built-in microphone in my laptop!

Feel free to share any ideas you may have in the comments section.

… Bob Spurzem

I feel like I’m in the popular movie starring Bill Murray. I’ve just spent my first week in Japan working with my Japanese business partners.

One of the enjoyable parts of the trip has been observing Japanese customs. In particular, I have found their use of cell phones to be quite interesting.

For example, everyone has a cell phone. I saw all men, women, and children using portable cell phones. I saw everyone sending and receiving text messages, checking train schedules, reading news, and playing games. But I didn’t see many people taking phone calls and I’ve heard no phones ring at all — amazing considering the thousands of people I passed daily in the train stations. And finally, I did not observe any BlackBerries or similar phones with full QWERTY keyboards.

My Japanese host explained to me that the Japanese are very polite and consider it very rude for phones to ring in public places. That sounds reasonable to me and this is something Westerners should consider. He then explained that phones with a Western-style QWERTY keyboard are not popular in Japan. Users prefer simple menus and scroll buttons, better suited to Japanese character sets.

I’m reminded of Bill Murray’s line in the movie that went something like: “I am not sure if I am having fun, but it is very different here.” Japan is certainly very different, but these differences are fun to observe.

… Bob Spurzem

Are you feeling saturated with all the tools that are supposed to make life better (email, cell phone, IM, etc.)? Do you feel as if your work performance is lagging as a result? If so, then I recommend you take a look at this thought-provoking book by Maggie Jackson, “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.” In “Distracted” we learn how new forms of electronic communication are impacting our basic lives.

What the author provides is awareness of the problem, leaving us to learn how to increase focus and reconnect with the people and world around us. Five of Amazon.com’s customers gave the book 5-star reviews.

Now if you can excuse me, I have to get back to my email.

… Bob Spurzem

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, it was announced that JetBlue Airways Corp.’s LiveTV Unit has agreed to buy Verizon Communications Inc.’s Airfone network. Airfone owns and operates 100 air-to-ground communications towers in the continental United States. The move will boost LiveTV’s ability to offer email and other broadband messaging services on its airplanes.

Together JetBlue, American, Continental, and Virgin America are conducting tests of Wi-Fi connectivity for email and instant messaging on their airplanes. There are two providers of air-to-ground communications for airline use. One is Airfone and the other is AirCell LLC, based in Itasca, Ill.

This announcement is very significant for all airline travelers, especially business travelers who will benefit from having access to email during long flights. Email access will be a welcome service on airplanes, but is it not clear yet how much the service will cost. Let’s hope it’s not as expensive as the original credit-card-operated phones that disappeared in part due to the high cost of the service.

… Bob Spurzem

In a 5/16/08 Reuters interview, Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that he expects more and more companies to abandon their in-house messaging systems and shift to “cloud computing” as a less expensive alternative. Capossela made the claim that, “in five years 50 percent of our Exchange mailboxes will be Exchange Online.” Considering this accounts for over 150 million mailboxes, that is a very significant claim.

A shift of this magnitude will have a ripple effect over the industry. First, it will impact the job demands for Exchange Administrators. As more and more companies pull the plug on their Exchange Servers, the demand for administrators will decrease. Second, it will impact the entire food chain of resellers, system integrators, and third-party vendors who supply software and services to support in-house Exchange. And finally, it will directly compete with existing Exchange hosting providers with a much lower cost of goods.

We can only speculate why Microsoft would make such a dramatic change to its existing Exchange business. Perhaps it is in response to competition by Google Gmail. Or maybe this is just part of a major IT shift to cloud computing. No matter what the reason is, it is a clear sign that the role of in-house IT is changing.

… Bob Spurzem

Given that Exchange 2007 was released more than a year ago and is a stable product, you might think everyone has already moved to it. In fact, organizations have a number of reasons for postponing the move. Samples of what I hear are:

• My current Exchange 2003 system is working fine.
• The new Exchange 2007 requires new server and storage hardware and I do not have the budget.
• The old Exchange is easy to operate and I do not have the time to master the new PowerShell commands.
• My current PST situation is a mess, but Exchange 2007 offers nothing to help.
• User mailboxes continue to grow, but moving to Exchange 2007 will only make matters worse.
• I am too busy with other more pressing projects.
• I am going to wait for the next version of Exchange and skip the 2007 release.
• I am considering switching to an online email service such as Exchange Online.

If you are considering moving to Exchange 2007 and have not yet made the move, we would love to hear your reasons why.

… Bob Spurzem

What are the storage consequences of email archiving?

Email servers send and receive hundreds of emails per day per user. Using an average size of 100KB, a single user can easily generate tens-of-megabytes of new data daily. Even a small organization faces a total email load of hundreds-of-megabytes per day. Larger ones face gigabytes per day. There is thus no such thing as a “small” email archiving solution.

Most email archiving products have difficulty with the quantity and volume of emails they must handle. As a result, storage is worth considering carefully during evaluations. Some pertinent issues are:

• How much storage is required for a typical user per month?
• How much storage is required to archive PST files?
• How is the data stored? On the file system in managed folders or in a database?
• Is the archive data de-duplicated?
• Is the archive data compressed?
• Is the archive solution supported on a virtual server? Note that archiving is disk I/O intensive, and often VM doesn’t work well.
• What storage hardware does the solution support? DAS? SAN? iSCSI? NAS?
• What happens when I run out of storage? Can more be added with minimal interruption?
• How is the archive data protected? Daily tape backup? Can it replicated for DR?

… Bob Spurzem

Web conferencing is a valuable Internet technology that allows users to connect globally, sharing files, presentations, and any software running on the desktop. Major players in this market are WebEx (recently purchased by Cisco), Microsoft LiveMeeting, and Citrix GoToMeeting. WebEx, LiveMeeting, and GoToMeeting are fee-based services sold to enterprises.

Now a new company, Dimdim, is offering a free Web conferencing product. Dimdim’s new product offers an attractive price (free!), advanced features for sharing presentations and desktops, as well as built-in VoIP communication and video streaming. I gave Dimdim a quick trial run and found it very easy to use, and the performance was excellent.

The Dimdim offering is significant because it makes a sophisticated communication tool available to everyone. Now organizations and individuals can enjoy the benefits of effective global communication without leaving their home or office.

Sounds like another technology to help keep planet Earth green. I wonder if Al Gore has tried it?

… Bob Spurzem

Moore’s Law discusses the exponential growth of electronic circuits. Perhaps email is another case where Moore’s Law applies.

Consider email quantity. Where once we sent and received only a handful of emails daily, today we routinely send and receive hundreds of emails. You might argue that the volumes are increasing exponentially. Then again, you might argue that for many people, the volume is more or less stable, or increasing linearly.

Email attachments are a better example. Initially email attachments were nonexistent or quite small (<10KB). Now attachments are very common and can easily be 1-10MB in size. What will it be like when we are sending rich media files that are hundreds of megabytes (or gigabytes) in size?

Finally, consider mailbox size. A 10MB mailbox was once the norm and was replaced with 100-200MB mailboxes in recent years. Today users expect multigigabyte mailboxes, made famous by Google’s Gmail.

Such growth in email directly impacts email server performance and capacity. Consider the latest version of Microsoft Exchange 2007. Today Exchange can easily support 1GB mailboxes and 10MB attachments. How will it support 10GB mailboxes and 100MB attachments in the future?

… Bob Spurzem

You’re probably flooded with inbound emails. Managing thousands of emails is time consuming, error prone and extremely frustrating. Plus it diverts you from more important tasks. Two new tools aim to make life easier.

The first is ClearContext. Its product is named Information Management System (IMS). This is an Outlook add-on that analyzes a user’s email to determine the importance of messages and contacts. A clever color scheme is used to prioritize incoming messages and organize messages into easy to manage projects. For example, a message from a sender to whom a user responds quickly is deemed critical and marked in red.

The second is Xobni. Its product is Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards). This is an Outlook add-on that includes a fully indexed high-speed search and organizes email based on conversations. Xobni’s analytics capture email history and display a list of parties involved and provide information about the sender. Xobni also adds a tab to Outlook’s interface and provides reports about email frequency to response times and actions taken.

If you’re suffering from mail overload, we recommend you take a look at these new products.

… Bob Spurzem

Attachments are one of the reasons for Exchange storage growth. People use Exchange email to send files to co-workers and customers, and depending on the file content (e.g., text, pictures, audio, video), these files can be quite large. Files in the 30MB-50MB range are becoming common. This causes rapid Exchange store growth and strains Exchange resources.

An alternative exists for sending files and it comes free of charge. These companies provide free online services for file delivery:

• YouSendIt
• Megaupload
• DropSend

There are other such services, and these are typical of the digital content delivery solutions available online. I tried YouSendIt and was able to send a large 7MB PowerPoint file to my email account in just minutes. The process was simple, fast, and free of charge. The other services appear to provide the same ease of use and performance.

These services can help when users need to send attachments that exceed Exchange send/receive limits. By default, these are 10MB. Rather than remove or extend the limits, users can take advantage of one of the online delivery solutions. In the long run, Exchange needs greater storage capacity. In the mean time, this approach satisfies users’ business needs without sacrificing Exchange performance.

… Bob Spurzem