Michael R. Brown

Now, where was I……?  Oh yes, I was listing the many benefits of archiving email  when I got yanked off stage!  Hmmm, where did I leave off……?  Ah yes…IT and one of the many benefits….

1. Reduces IT call centre traffic.  How many times in a month does IT receive a call to increase quotas or retrieve deleted email?  As I said in my previous point, quotas become a thing of the past with SourceOne, so no calls Continue Reading

As promised in last week’s blog, this entry is dedicated to beginning to detail some of the benefits of archiving email with EMC SourceOne.  In case you missed it, here  is last week’s entry:

Benefits of archiving email:

1. Reduces storage requirements on your mail server.  Mailboxes are typically stored on what we call tier 1 storage — your most expensive disk — whilst the archive is typically on slower, much less expensive disk.  How does this work?  Well, when EMC SourceOne archives a message, it can also stub or shortcut the body and/or the attachments.  It physically removes the attachment and replaces it with a pointer if you will, to where the content resides in the archive.  So, that email with a 4.7 MB presentation attached to it suddenly becomes 7k in size!  Instead of that 4.7 MB sitting in your mailbox on tier 1 storage, it is sitting in the archive on storage that is 25% or less the cost.  And, the user experience remains intact. Continue Reading

In my last blog I talked about doing “real archiving”.  What is that exactly?  Simply put, it is using policies and rules to determine what content should get kept — archived — where it should be stored and for how long.  A proper archive is also online and enables users to get to the content through some intelligent search mechanism.  This differs dramatically from just putting content away on some box.  This “box” also might be on line, but lacks any intelligence to what should be kept; in most cases, everything is kept and most likely much longer than need be.  There is no intelligence behind what is stored; the latter isn’t really archiving, Continue Reading

Forgive me reader for I have sinned…..it has been many, many weeks since my last blog contribution.  Anyway, where was I at the end of 2011?……..ah yes, I was writing about EMC technologies that give you insight into what is in your environment.  I am now going to make you aware of EMC technologies that allow you to do something about all of that data.  Whether that data resides in mailboxes, PST files, file shares or Microsoft SharePoint, you have a fantastic EMC option that can move this data off of tier 1 storage into an archive that resides on tier 2, 3, or 4 storage.  

You might say, “I have an archive already, it is my tape library.”  (Imagine you are reading my lips).   Continue Reading

My first post for 2012 makes me realise we are now one year closer to IDC’s forecast of 35 Zetabytes of data in the world by 2020!  A zetabyte by the way is a 1 with 21 zeros behind it, or…….1 billion terabytes!  Anyway, we are closer to that number.  My friends, that represents far more than just data in files.  It is in email, databases, groupware repositories (e.g. SharePoint, IBM Domino, Documentum, etc.), email, instant message repositories, and did I mention…..email?  The largest of those repositories and most used is probably eMail.  In a normal business day I receive more than 150 emails.  Do I process each and everyone and then delete them or file them accordingly?  No.  Do I have rules to process them and file them accordingly?  Well, some.  Ahem, candidly speaking, very few.  I would say that I am able to probably process 50 to 75 emails on a good day.  This leaves at least 75 emails that will sit in my inbox until I do something with them and then of the others I did look at, 50% of those will sit in my inbox forever and ever unless a policy is put in place to delete them or they are archived.

I am not unusual (well, not at least with regard to my ever-bloating email box.)  I looked over someone’s shoulder the other day and noticed he had 63,000+ Continue Reading

In my last posting, I talked about our propensity for keeping all electronic data; commonly referred to as ESI or Electronically Stored Information.  I also talked about having to change our habits that we cannot go on this way forever and ever as there is too much data being created.  Ok, fine.  What do we do about it and why should we?  We have great technology today that virtualizes, shrinks, and de-dups data.  Lady Backup talks a great game in convincing everyone that they need a great backup strategy and talks about very, very impressive technology to achieve this.  And yes, we do all need a good backup strategy.  However, the story as told, still is, “go ahead, keep everything.”  No.  We need a different story.  The amount of data growth is outpacing the rate at which the cost of hardware and technology is reduced each year.  It is also outpacing the rate at which we can use clever technology to reduce the net data size and foot print within the data centre and the environment.  Again I reference Lady Backup and one of her postings as an example of the latter: Google consumed the same amount of power as 200,000 American homes last year to support their data centres.

Ok, not every company is a Google undoubtedly.  However, virtually all organisations are faced with similar challenges.  Organisations cannot continue to throw hardware at this data problem.  They need to throw Continue Reading

In the physical world, we write a note to ourselves and eventually bin it. Back in the day, we created physical drafts of documents.  These drafts would eventually get binned as well.   If we stockpiled all the notes and drafts, we would run out of space to store them.  However, in the digital world, we inexorably keep everything—regardless of its significance or worth.  We have applications that can automatically retain every version of every document in its system.  And if we don’t have an application to do it for us, we have our own cunning and adroit ways of accomplishing such tasks: “budget_2012 – v1.xlsx”, “budget_2012 — (Michaels Version).xlsx”, “budget_2012 — finaldonoteverdelete.xlsx”, etc. etc.  In my previous posting, I gave an example of this with my “Birth of a Presentation.”  This practice or pension of keeping every scrap of electronic data along with man’s drive to invent new ways and places for us to create data is causing unprecedented explosion of data in our digital world.

Why have we become a society of digital pack-rats (hoarders?)  Do you realise that I still have my email box from the company I left in 2000?!   Earlier this year I was going through security at the Vienna airport and sent my backpack through the x-ray machine.  I got held up and asked to re-scan my backpack because I had “too much electronics” – I had over 2TB of storage in the form of various thumb drives and USB drives and it took me three trips Continue Reading

By now most of us have heard about the explosion of digital information in our world. It is difficult to grasp when you hear large numbers and words like “zettabyte.”

Zettabyte?! Eek, sounds scary. However, let’s see if I can put this into context for you by giving you an example of fairly common scenario. I call this, “Birth of a Presentation.”

- Email sent to Michael from marketing asking if he can do a presentation at a conference. The email contains an attachment with presentation template to start from.
[Copies of presentation: 2]
- Michael saves template to local drive
[Copies of presentation: 3]
- Email response from Michael to marketing confirming he will do it and immediately Continue Reading