Checking a BlackBerry in the middle of a 5-15 person meeting is often disrespectful and disruptive.

DDB Canada, a marketing communications company, has implemented a novel policy in an effort to thwart this behavior. Similar to soccer, they have implemented a carding system. Fellow employees are encouraged to flash a Yellow Card to employees caught using their mobile devices during internal or client meetings. Two yellow cards for an employee results in a Red Card. The penalty for a Red Card is that the employee has to pay the service fees for their mobile device for that particular month. Ouch.

… Colin R. Bush

A recent NASA report indicates that 12% of NASA engineers and 21% of NASA scientists are currently eligible to retire, and the report projects 28% and 45%, respectively, by 2011. This may be a staffing problem for NASA, but think about how much information in the “brains” of these individuals that will be leaving the Space Agency.

Organizations everywhere are struggling with the problem of how to retain corporate knowledge through employee churn and an aging workforce. Many are looking to wiki-based technology to develop a corporate knowledge-bank.

Wikis are a great place to centralize and organize like information. Wikis allow contribution by almost anyone, as updates can be done quickly using a relatively easy-to-learn language.

The challenge with this technology is getting users, especially management, to contribute. We have heard of using compensation and/or mandating the use of the wiki, but until employees see value, adoption can be slow. It is similar to CRM systems. Employees will continue to use Outlook Contacts to track their customers until they see value in the CRM, like simplified forecasting or faster compensation.

Support by senior management, as well as an intuitive layout and preloading of some key information, are key aspects to a successful corporate wiki.

If you have developed an innovative way to capture corporate knowledge or have found a method to encourage contribution to your corporate wiki, please post it in the comments. We look forward to your ideas.

… Colin R. Bush

In October 2007, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) industry group released an XML standard for easing the transfer of electronically stored information (ESI). EDRM has now released new tools and documentation to support the adoption of this standard.

In January 2008, EDRM released the following for download:

• Updated EDRM XML compliance load file (Jan. 23, 2008). For testing a product’s ability to import compliant XML files.
• EDRM XML Interchange Format Schema Documentation (Jan. 23, 2008). Describes the XML format.
• Updated EDRM XML XSD (Jan. 11, 2008). The actual XML Schema Definition.
• EDRM XML Validation Tool, Version 1.0.6 (Jan. 9, 2008). For testing a product’s ability to export compliant XML files.

EDRM also has an on-demand webinar that provides a good primer on this standard.

Electronic discovery (e-discovery) is complex due to the volume of data that must be analyzed, and the diversity of ESI sources. It is further complicated by the number of different tools (products and/or services) used through the process. Adoption of a common format to move data between tools will speed up the discovery process, reduce costs, and increase the quality of the presented content. This is the objective for the EDRM XML standard.

… Colin R. Bush

AXS-One recently briefed us on version 3.7 of their Compliance Platform. They have nicknamed this version the Data Preservation Edition as its primary focus is on data retention and supporting electronic discovery, including hold orders.

The AXS-One Compliance Platform provides a single, policy-driven archive for managing a wide range of electronically stored information, including email and instant messages, reports, SAP documents and data, desktop documents, voice, video, and images.

A significant addition in this release is integrated role-based case management to support electronic discovery. Roles, such as Case Manager, Search Specialist, or Expert Reviewer, are assigned to individuals on the litigation team, and the case management interface has been designed for use by nontechnical staff.

Other new features include:

• Advanced search capabilities, including support for extended character sets
• Enhanced production capabilities based on search sets
• Support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 via AXS-Link for Exchange
• Support for Domino 8 via AXS-Link for Lotus Notes, including use of the DXL storage format
• Enhanced reporting and monitoring, including a dashboard of service health and alerting capabilities

The new case management and production capabilities will be appealing for organizations struggling with discovery and, potentially, reduce the need for separate archive and case management tools. The ability to allow litigation teams to manage search and review without involvement from IT will also enable the discovery to be streamlined.

… Colin R. Bush

Photo sharing sites, blogging, and social networks are popular ways for us to extend our online presence. Whether using LinkedIn to maintain business contacts or MySpace for socializing with friends, we are all placing more and more of our personal information online.

With all this information out there, what if it were easy to aggregate information on individuals across all of these social network sites and easily track activity as the information changes? Does the sound of that feel a little creepy? Well you can do just that using Spokeo.

With a Spokeo account, users simply add friends (or whoever) by email addresses or profile URL and the site collects their information from these sites. Spokeo can access public data on more than 30 social networking sites, including Flickr, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pandora, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Windows Live Spaces, and YouTube. Once added, each time you log into Spokeo it provides you with a summary of all the changes made by your friends on these sites. This is all done anonymously without friend invitations or acknowledgments, as it is accessing public information on these sites.

Are you actually spying on your friends? Should this be a privacy concern? Spokeo says it is only accessing information that is already publicly available. It’s true that controlling the information available at each of these sites is relatively easy. However, when the data from all sites is put together, a much clearer picture of an individual can be drawn. It illustrates why we need to monitor our online presence and educate our youth about how to protect their identities online.

I think the following except from a Spokeo blog post titled “Cool or Scary?” says it best: “Whenever I introduce Spokeo to my friends, their first reactions are always ‘Wow!’ then ‘Hm … this is a little scary,’ then ‘This is freaking cool!’ After saying those three things, they’ll just ignore my existence and start checking out their friends’ content.”

When I first heard about the site, I did just that.

… Colin R. Bush

Titus Labs recently released version 3.0 of its Document Classification for Microsoft Office product.

Document Classification provides the ability to easily apply classification levels to content. Based on the classification, visual document markings can be added within a document, such as a custom header, footer, or watermarks. Additionally, markings are added within the metadata of the document that data leak prevention solutions or document management solutions can use to trigger rules.

New features in this release include:

• Support for Microsoft Office 2007, including the use of the ribbon and task panes
• Context-sensitive analysis that suggests classification levels using Smart Tags
• Intuitive interface that uses drop-down menus to simplify classification decisions by users
• Distinct classification for specific portions or sections of a document
• Integration with Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS) for applying policies, such as restricting printing, cut and paste, or sending via email
• Integration with Microsoft Office Document Inspector for cleaning the document or a portion of the document based on a particular sensitivity

Classification of electronic content will become increasingly important as the amount of data that must be retained continues to grow. Classification will allow organizations to keep data that is classified as important or relevant to business and dispose of the rest. Automated classification technology, while progressing, is still not accurate enough to be trusted entirely. Technologies such as this, that suggest classifications and that simplify the classification process for users, will be valuable for organizations over the next few years.

… Colin R. Bush

In many organizations, the enterprise messaging environment has been in place for many years and left to evolve over time. It will typically have been run and maintained as an operational service without significant ongoing attention paid to design and architecture.

As organizations start to consider email disaster recovery, this lack of proper prior planning becomes a significant challenge. Message store replication and system monitoring add load to the servers that are already overburdened. This results in slow responsiveness for users or, worse, service interruptions.

It is important to assess the current health of the messaging environment before implementing a disaster recovery solution. In fact, the health should be reassessed before implementing any solution that may impact the system. As part of the assessment, ensure the following are considered:

• Load on the servers — especially important if servers run multiple applications or perform multiple functions within the messaging environment.
• Storage availability — ensure that there is disk space to support the required agents or data replication.
• Connections per mailbox — multiple connections to the mailbox server are often required to support mobile or IMAP capabilities.
• Number of functional mailboxes — functional mailboxes are often accessed by multiple users simultaneously.
• Complex folder structures and usage — mailboxes are often used as a filing system. Bulk moves of items between folders often result in large numbers of transactions, which must be replicated.

The above is not an exhaustive list, but does include some that are less obvious. In many cases, implementation of a disaster recovery solution will often require rebalancing of the existing messaging environment. All disaster recovery products have some impact on the messaging environment; organizations should ensure they understand the demands their products will impose. This can be done through consultation with vendors and testing in a nonproduction environment.

… Colin R. Bush, with thanks to Cemaphore

A client recently mentioned that they had a user with a 13GB mailbox. In today’s world, large mailboxes are becoming the norm (although 13GB is rather excessive). Ensuring a robust environment that will support today’s large mailboxes can be difficult enough. Now consider disaster recovery/high-availability (DR/HA) solutions and the network impact of replicating these large mailboxes.

Replication of message store data to an alternate location typically happens in two stages. The first stage is the initial seeding of the alternate location. In this phase, mailbox data up to a specific point in time is replicated from the primary server to the alternate server. The second stage involves the ongoing synchronization of the data on the alternate server. This synchronization is typically done through the replication of small, incremental updates, potentially file slices, logs, or mailbox-level transactions.

Organizations implementing DR/HA solutions must carefully monitor network utilization, especially during the initial seeding stage. The network utilization required for this initial seeding can be enough to impact other applications using the network. This is especially true on a converged network supporting sensitive real-time applications such as IP telephony, video, or other collaborative applications.

Organizations implementing a DR/HA solution should look for solutions that allow the initial seeding stage to be scheduled during off-peak hours and/or solutions that can limit the amount of network bandwidth utilized for replication.

… Colin R. Bush, with thanks to Cemaphore

Cemaphore has recently released version 2.2 of its MailShadow disaster recovery solution for Exchange.

MailShadow monitors individual mailboxes on the primary Exchange server, replicating and replaying mailbox-level transactions into a shadow mailbox on a live Exchange server — possibly at a distant location. Using this synchronized shadow mailbox, MailShadow automates the failover in the event of a failure of the primary Exchange server.

MailShadow does not require the primary and alternate mailbox servers to be running the same version of Microsoft Exchange. In MailShadow v2.2, Cemaphore has added functionality that allows a permanent failover of a mailbox to the alternate Exchange server to support mailbox migration.

Using MailShadow, user mailboxes can be replicated to an upgraded Exchange server without impacting the user’s ability to work. Once the shadow mailbox is synchronized, the administrator can perform a permanent failover of the mailbox to the upgraded Exchange server. Mailbox replication can occur without impacting the user experience. As a result, mailbox migrations can occur during business hours.

MailShadow’s ability to support replication between different versions of Exchange is a useful feature in a disaster recovery solution. Obviously, it’s also useful for migration — from Exchange 2003 to 2007, say.

… Colin R. Bush

Organizations using Microsoft Exchange are very familiar with its close ties with Active Directory. Active Directory already contains the user information and, in most cases, is logically organized for managing the environment. This includes user provisioning.

While not very sexy, the ability to apply policies based on groups defined in Active Directory is logical. Active Directory already contains the users and is accessible using standard technology (e.g., LDAP). In fact, requiring IT administrators in an Exchange environment to manage user grouping with something other than Active Directory is really just adding another layer of complexity.

By using Active Directory groups, the administrators responsible for provisioning user accounts can do so using a single, standard support tool. Other solution-specific interfaces for user administration, such as the administrative console of an email archiving solution, aren’t really required.

… Colin R. Bush, with thanks to Cemaphore