CMS Watch E-mail Archiving and Management Feed

Think twice before selecting this Barracuda

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 3 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0400

While traveling from Washington, DC to San Jose, CA for KM World last week to speak about (among other things) e-mail archiving, I encountered this advertisement in both airports. You probably know Barracuda as a well-regarded spam-filter vendor, but now they've moved into the e-mail archiving business as well.

The pitch seems obvious: You the busy, jet-setting exec now have one more thing to worry about...but never fear...you just have to plug in this nifty little appliance and you can stay legal.

That certainly sounds good. But it can also cause more problems than it solves.

You see, saving all your messages is actually not the law. In fact, archiving everything willy-nilly can have the opposite effect of leaving you more exposed. Depending on your industry, you likely need to save some of your messages. Knowing what to keep and what to legally and ethically discard is, of course, the realm of proper Records Management. Last I heard, that doesn't come in an appliance.

This advertisement is doubly ironic because, as an appliance that sits in front of your mail server, you actually don't save all your mail. Internal messages go unarchived. But you likely need to save some of those, too. As E-mail Archiving & Management Report readers know, there's a debate in the industry between those who advocate this appliance approach and those vendors who rely on mailserver journaling. The report explains how there's pros and cons to both approaches. As the other Barracuda would say, "No one expects us to agree on everything."

But let's agree on this: saving all your e-mail is no solution to managing the message mountain. You can install an appliance, but you better install some policies too.

ECM via Utrecht, Mumbai, and Bangalore

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 14:19:00 -0400

September this year sees an early start to the conference season, and I find myself first in the Netherlands and then off to India. As always I hope you can join me at one of these events.

On the 17th September I will be in Utrecht to run a workshop on ECM & SharePoint at the HartmanEVENT 08, I keynoted at a predecessor to this in 2007 and very much look forward to the return visit. From there I head to Bangalore and Mumbai. First for the BT Summit in Bangalore on the 23/24th, where I will be talking about ECM & SOA, and E-mail Archiving, and running a workshop on ECM product selection - and then flying onto Mumbai for 26th for the Executive Edition of the event, where I will be providing a critical analysis of the current ECM marketplace.

Two different events in two very different locations - but both particularly interesting ones for me. I have had a long association with India from first vacationing there 20 years ago, to working for Wipro and retaining many friendships within the country. India means a lot to me, and I am thrilled to be a part of the first event there that prominently features ECM. But even more, I love the fact that ECM is featured within a true technology conference, one that looks at such topics as SOA and Virtualization - for this is reality of major ECM projects. Add to that the typical welcome, and stimulating discussions that accompany any event in India this becomes something special.

Just like the BT Summit, HartmanEVENT also takes a different and wonderfully challenging direction. For the event in Utrecht is run by CMS Watch friend Erik Hartman, and he has long espoused a belief that all data and content should be managed in a unified manner, and his conferences promote that goal. It's a goal that Erik knows I have my doubts about, hence again I am looking forward to being challenged and stimulated by the conversation.

If you attend either of these events do come up and say hello in person!

CMS Watch consulting services

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:16:00 -0400

A question we are often asked is "Does CMS Watch provide consulting services?" In fact this question is asked so often, I thought a quick blog entry might be in order.

The answer should be prefaced by our raison d'être: CMS Watch evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions. We see our work primarily as informing and educating buyers of content technology via our reports and this web site. We admit that the constant work of updating reports such as The ECM Suites Report and the eMail Management and Archiving Report leaves us little time for consulting, but some of our customers do desire personal help and advice. In these cases we provide advisory and consulting services, most commonly to help with vendor and product selection. We don't do very large projects, nor do we compete with the big consultancies and integrators out there. Indeed why would we -- they are often our clients too, and many are among our subscribers, who receive analyst time built-in as part of our offering.

The engagements we do take on help keep our feet solidly on the ground. Buyers know they are getting tough, critical and truly independent advice, while at the same time, we remain rooted in the world of real projects and real buying issues. We help our clients distinguish marketing hype and hyperbole from the facts and real-world experience of others - something we work hard to ensure is reflected in our reports. If this kind of consulting is something you feel you could benefit from, just drop us a note. Remember, we consult only for buyers, and never for vendors.

A new (and wearable) Content Technologies Subway Map

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:55:00 -0400

A new season brings an updated vendor map:

We added a Yellow Line -- for XML & Component Content Management vendors, and reflected some other station changes.

And now, if you like what you see, you and your wall can wear it. Our new store at Cafe Press offers t-shirt and posters of various sizes, along with other CMS Watch tchotchkes.

Regarding the latter, perhaps you already own your fill of mugs and mousepads, but can you ever have enough beer steins? Bring it to the next event where we're speaking and we'll fill it up with the closest available brew. ;-)

Narrowcasting to your feed aggregator

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:39:00 -0400

We're pleased that CMS Watch now covers ten different technologies, but I suspect that many of you take an interest in only one or two families of tools. If that's you, here's a list of technology-specific RSS feeds that will just send relevant postings to your reader or aggregator.

Digital Asset Management: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/DAM

ECM Suites: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/ECM

E-mail Archiving & Management: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/E-mail

Enterprise Portals: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/Portal

Enterprise Search: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/Search

SharePoint: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/SharePoint

Social Software: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/Social

Web Analytics: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/Analytics

Web CMS / WCM: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/CMS

XML & Component Content Management: http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.channel.xml/CCM

ECM buying tips from the experts

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:35:00 -0400

This past week I had the pleasure of keynoting at the DocTrain event in Indianapolis (held at the truly magnificent Union Station venue), and also running a small session on "How to procure Content Technologies." I have been running these small sessions for a long while now and they tend to prove very popular, and though I have been doing this for years, there are always new tricks to be added to the bag.

At the end of this particular session I chatted with the head of a leading US ECM integrator (who wishes for good reason to remain anonymous!) who said he liked the session but would have added two key points.

Never buy at the end of a quarter

Avoid ELA's (Enterprise License Agreements)

And he is quite right -- and anyone who attends these sessions in future will be sure to be reminded of these key lessons.

First, when it gets close to the end of the quarter, vendors sales staff are desperate to boost and close any outstanding deals. Theoretically this puts you the buyer into a strong position. Theoretically you have maximum leverage. But theory is not the same as practice. Just as I would not go into the ring against Mike Tyson, you should likewise recognize that against an experienced account executive from EMC, IBM, Oracle, or any other ECM vendor, you are way out of your league. The great deal you negotiate -- for example the 300 extra seats you got for the price of 150 -- may not seem such a bargain in the long term. When prices drop, the next major upgrade is announced or you simply find them sitting on the shelf racking up maintenance costs. Buy what you need, no more, and stay away from Account Execs when they are trying to close out the quarter.

Likewise my friend makes a very good point about ELA's (particularly popular in large ECM and Archiving deals). These license schemes have been driven in part by the demand of large enterprise who in the past have bought modular licenses and found themselves stiffed when they need yet more modules at every turn. "Oh no madam, you don't have workflow as part of that deal....or frankly anything you need to make that system I bought you operable, you will have to buy more appropriate licenses from me." ELAs seem to make a great deal of sense, since you get everything for a single price.

But they bite in two unexpected ways. One, the ELA almost certainly excludes some vital component that you will only find in the fine print once it's too late. Secondly and potentially more serious: once you have signed an ELA, no matter how big the deal, you are no longer of any interest to the vendor sales team, who have moved on to the next client. I can personally attest to watching a deal worth over $20 Million US get signed -- and watching the account exec leaving the building within 30 minutes, even though they were scheduled to remain for the next two days. Once you have signed an ELA you have lost any and all leverage with the vendor. Think hard about whether you want to be in that situation...

Legal ruling shakes up E-mail Archiving and Management Sector

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:49:00 -0400

The whole issue of (E-mail Archiving and Management) EAM has come under the spotlight recently - triggered by a ruling by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco - a ruling that touches on the Fourth Amendment "Protection from unreasonable search and seizure." In this particular case, plaintiffs argued that when employers read the content of text messages sent by their employees, text messages that were held by a hosted vendor (Arch Wireless), that the employees' fourth amendment privileges were breached. In other words that even though the employees were using company-paid messaging systems, that the employer should still respect their privacy and the confidential nature of personal message exchanges.

It's a ruling that could have a huge impact on the EAM market and in particular on vendors like Fortiva, Dell MessageOne and Google Postini, that all offer hosted SaaS EAM solutions. Why SaaS options in particular? Well the ruling states that employers (when using "outside" third-party text or e-mail services) cannot get access to employees' content without their permission first. The ruling is a bit hazy -- and may or may not apply if the mail and text servers are located on-premise. But regardless of whether this just applies to SaaS or both on and off premise solutions, just think the implications through for a moment -- the impact is potentially huge.

Since the ruling, the story has been picked up widely in the press - and as a result the popular verdict is clear - workplace mail is (for the time being at least) confidential. So how does this impact firms that are using EAM software to check up (snoop and breach confidentiality) on what employees are saying to one another? Where does it leave any employer when it comes to accessing employee messages in potentially legitimate business situations? Currently it leaves them between a rock and a hard place. There will likely be some exceptions to this for example those subject to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), i.e., potential terrorists. But for the average employee without murderous intent for now at least the law seems to be quite clear: in the United States your employer cannot assume access to your messages without your permission. And for EAM vendors they are in an even more invidious position -- rather like those shops at the mall that sell drug paraphernalia -- perfectly legal to possess, but use them as designed and you are in big trouble

It's clearly an area that will be debated ad-nauseum over the coming months. But regardless of the ultimate outcome, this ruling is a reminder to us all that technology and vendors do not set law, and are not exempt from it. EAM vendors cannot sell you a compliant system; there is no such thing. It's you the employer and buyer who either is or is not compliant with laws and regulations. And just because technology appears to have run ahead of itself here does not mean that the law will have to run to catch up. Rather it will be you the user and buyer who will have to control and adjust your usage of the technologies.

Fortiva acquired by Proofpoint - tread with caution

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:11:00 -0400

Fortiva, the Canadian SaaS vendor has been acquired by Proofpoint.

It's an interesting move for a couple of reasons. First and foremost the acquisition itself offers further evidence of a white hot market emerging. In the past year we have Dell, HP, Google, and Oracle all making bold moves into the space. But in this regard the acquisition by Proofpoint is a little unusual. Proofpoint, an e-mail security firm, is not a particularly large vendor; indeed it's quite small and is itself (like Fortiva) VC-backed. One start-up digesting another usually means the VCs see the attraction of beefing up an offering for acquisition or flotation.

So this acquisition unlike others we have seen recently does not mean that Fortiva has necessarily moved into stable hands. In some regards it suggests an "interesting" period ahead as investors pull together a unified company/offering. Clearly buyers need to get very comfortable about where things are headed before investing in a long-term vendor agreements. Hence we would have to caution buyers to tread carefully with Fortiva for the foreseeable future, a shame really as Fortiva certainly has some useful features, as we detailed in our evaluation of their service.

The value of archiving and the limitations of e-discovery

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:49:00 -0400

Today we read about yet another major financial scandal allegedly exposed through the discovery of an e-mail message from a fund principal that apparently stated that their fund was going to be"'toast."

The first thing I thought about this was that (if true) it was a fantastically stupid communication to put in an e-mail exchange. Secondly, I wondered why it took so long to find this mail -- surely such high-profile financial managers would have their mail exchanges monitored automatically and an exchange like this should have rung every major alarm bell in the firm within seconds. Of course they could have been using an external system to get around that; we don't know at present. But this case once more highlights the limitations of e-mail monitoring (discussed here the other day) and e-discovery, and conversely the value of content archiving.

E-discovery is in many regards simply glorified Enterprise Search technology, but with the added ability to apply legal holds to data. Just as Enterprise Search is limited by the quality and location of the content it indexes, so too are e-discovery tools. Though in the case of e-discovery the limitations are often more severe: evidence may or may not be conveniently located in an e-mail message, as seems to be the case at Bear Stearns. More commonly evidence has to be culled from not only e-mail stores, but also from instant messaging systems, document systems, ERP systems, financial and business applications, external drives, and so on. The idea that e-discovery is limited to mail -- as many vendors (and worryingly many buyers) seem to think -- is naive in the extreme. Yet this misplaced belief is based on the reality that the bulk of the data you will have to search will indeed be mail. Mail represents the largest form of data in any organization, typically by an order of magnitude (10x) or more.

But here's the rub. Most of that e-mail mountain consists of redundant data or as the technical terms goes, "crap." As we discuss at length in our E-mail Archiving & Management Report, typically 80% of mail data consists of a duplication. Yet any search tool has to treat each piece of data equally, slowing the process down massively and shooting discovery costs through the roof. How much more sensible to use an archiving method to capture, filter, and reduce that volume -- and ease the burden and cost of discovery?

What did we learn today from the Bear Stearns scandal? Not much really, other than mail (and messages) continue to the be the key "gotcha" elements of the data mountain, and that we need to monitor and manage them ever more closely. Though the monitoring elements are far from mature, EAM tools today archive and filter very efficiently indeed. The need to take mail and mail content seriously is now an imperative, and building a strategy, agreeing methods and policies, and selecting the right tools -- however complex -- is a must.

EAM focused on the wrong elements?

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:33:00 -0400

This week I was speaking on the topic of EAM (E-Mail Archiving and Management) at the big SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) event in New York. As always it was as much a learning experience for me as for those who attended my sessions. It turned out that EAM in this sector is viewed somewhat differently than I had thought. In the Securities and Financial Markets world EAM is of interest and use for two primary reasons:

First and foremost, simple archiving to meet regulatory needs, in the USA particularly SEC 17a3 and 17a4
Secondly, for monitoring e-mail exchanges between brokers and other staff to detect and block potential wrongdoing

All the other elements of EAM -- in particular Policy Management -- were of peripheral interest. This left me with much to ponder. So too did the discussions around monitoring, for though it remains a very important service among this crowd, those I spoke to were universally unimpressed with the current monitoring offerings on the market. Some deigning them to be next to useless.

Similarly, in this sector search tools as we know then are held in very low regard, with the concepts of keywords and ranking considered of little value. What these buyers want is what they already use with their structured data: trend and activity analysis.

To put this another way, search is fine if you know what you are looking for, and that thing is an item or event in the past. It is of no use at all in predicting current/future trends or potential abnormal activities. And in an industry that is fixated on latency issues -- and defines message delivery of more than half a second as unacceptably slow -- you can see their point. But it's surely not just the cutting edge world of Wall Street finance that has this need. Surely as we move toward Social Software and ever more ubiquitous real-time collaboration, the need for real or near real-time analytics will become increasingly important for all kinds of organizations.

So at present, the best means of compliance is to filter out junk and to securely archive and index legacy mail -- and to keep policy management to a minimum. I think it's true that search is something you do in retrospect and has limited value in a dynamic business environment. Alas the tools to monitor and deliver real-time analytics against not just mail, but all forms of unstructured content, are today non-existent. EAM monitoring tools are very limited in their ability to catch wrongdoing in real time. It's not that the technology doesn't exist -- to some degree it does -- but more that the EAM market itself is not there yet. It remains fixated on rather dated, records management approaches to EAM, rather than focusing on the ability to derive ever richer analytical data from both the live and the archived mail environments.

Does Your Company Have an E-mail Archiving and Management Problem?

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 07:24:00 -0400

Nearly everyone gripes about the effectiveness of their e-mail archiving and management tools, but just how bad is the problem at your enterprise? Take our handy e-mail archiving and management "health quiz" and get a custom diagnosis...

The basics of selecting an E-mail Archiving and Management system

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:51:00 -0400

In our most recent report, E-mail Archiving & Management (EAM), we struggled early on in the research process to differentiate in a meaningful way among the vendors in this sector. It was a good struggle to have, as it turned out that through our research we found few buyers or even other analyst sources had tried to categorize this sector either.

Like all markets, EAM can be sliced and diced in various ways, but as a starting point to buyers I tend to suggest first subdividing the vendors between those that are Policy-centric and those that are Archiving-centric. And of course figure out which particular category has more appeal and fit for your particular organization.

The Policy-centric vendors we evaluate in the report are those that offer the most advanced and sophisticated functions to provide records management-style capabilities to e-mail. Most typically these vendors sell into larger enterprises and government departments. As such you'll find them at the higher end in terms of cost and complexity to deploy, configure, and run. This higher cost and complexity is justified for customers in heavily regulated environments or any enterprise that needs to closely monitor e-mail content. It is also justified for those trying to filter out non-business related mails, archiving only true records. Vendors we consider to be in this category include CA, Open Text, and Symantec.

Archiving-centric vendors, just like their policy-centric competitors, sell mainly into larger enterprise or government markets. Though most of them provide some kind of policy management capabilities, their real appeal lies in their approach to archive optimization. These vendors tend to market more to the IT buyer than the business buyer, as their approach centers on backing up and actively archiving mail servers to maximize server and storage optimization.

In some cases vendors accomplish this through novel and unique hardware and storage arrangements (Mimosa, ZL, and HP); others approach it through a deep and long understanding of broad archiving requirements (AXS-One and EMC).

Of all the technologies we evaluate EAM is arguably the most difficult for a buyer to compare options side by side. But sometimes just some simple slicing and dicing can help the process.

CMS Watch Competition Winner

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 09:45:00 -0400

You may remember a while back we launched our little competition to come up with a new name for our vendor positioning chart. We had some great (and varied) responses from all over the world. And it took quite an internal debate to decide on the eventual winner, but decide we did. And the winner is...Laurence Hart who offered us the name "Cross Check." Laurence, a bottle of champagne is yours.

Over the next month we will continue working with our designer to revamp the chart, and of course to rename it -- so look out for the Cross Check in all our report updates this year.

Cloud Computing and Content Management

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:43:00 -0400

If there is a buzz around Web 2.0 in the Content Technology community, then there is a roar in the wider IT community around Cloud Computing. It's a great term, "Cloud Computing," as it conjures up visions of an invisible Internet -- an ether-like zone in the sky where computing power and storage is unfettered by the petty restrictions of boxes, cables, and technicians. Cloud computing sounds fluffy, it sounds cool, it sounds limitless, it sounds like the future.

In fact Cloud Computing simply means moving things to big and bigger Data Centers. Data Centers are anything but fluffy. They are huge, energy-sucking giants -- many the size of small towns. They are environmental disasters and the only thing fluffy about them is the C0₂ emissions they belch out. Data Centers will in time according to The Uptime Institute become bigger polluters than the aviation industry. Data Centers require massive amounts of energy to operate -- often as much energy is used to cool the centers as to power them. All that heat has to go somewhere. If you think your air conditioning unit is an ecological no-no, then consider the AC demands on a data center the size of 5 football fields, then consider further that according to market research firm IDC, there are over 7,000 major data centers worldwide, and many more in the process of being built. By the way, just because they are big does not make them efficient; it is estimated that around 1/3rd of Data Center servers continually sit idle.

Yet there is very vocal group that thinks the Cloud is the future of ECM and Archiving -- so, why bother to dispose of data? Why not just send it to the "Cloud" with its limitless processing and storage capacity? The people who run the Data Centers, and those that sell equipment to run them such as Sun Microsystems and EMC, would all think that a good idea.

What puzzles me though is the contradiction between good Archiving and ECM practices versus a demand for ever greater processing and storage capacity. Aside from the fact that Cloud computing by definition means that your data has to move to and from a distant location, and latency issues (and simple physics) will always dictate that this will be slower than on-site deployments, there are much more important issues to consider.

For if you only stop for a moment you will see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Archiving/ECM equation. Take E-mail Archiving for example. Almost all EAM systems promise (and typically deliver) a reduction in storage capacity needs of about 80%. Good e-mail management can reduce that still further, till ultimately your e-mail mountain has dropped to less than 10% of its original size. In other words the efficient management of content can reduce server farms to single servers, with active archiving and disposal of redundant data keeping the volumes from growing exponentially. Now that is not only Green Computing, it's smart computing, because in reducing the data volumes, you increase the processing speeds by as much more than an order of magnitude and you leave a tiny carbon footprint. So much better than the SUV -- sorry, "Cloud" -- approach to computing.

High Stakes for Documentum

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:47:00 -0400

CMS Watch principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe headed to Vegas last week to participate in the annual EMC World show. Amid partying storage sales guys and dazed content management developers he witnessed a Documentum product line-up getting increasingly eclipsed by other EMC offerings. For EMC it's a reasonable bet, but for Documentum software customers, the stakes are high indeed...

Dining at the intersection of Search and Retention

kthomas@cmswatch.com(Kas Thomas) — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:41:00 -0400

Lawyers were well represented (you might say) at this year's Enterprise Search Summit in New York. At times, ESS felt more like an e-discovery conference with analytics and social-computing side-tracks rather than a search conference featuring a few e-discovery sessions.

Based on what I saw at the Search Summit, there seems to be a renewed awareness, at ever-higher levels in the corporate responsibility chain, that in a litigious business environment "enterprise search" is not just a knowledge-management tactic or a productivity aid, but a survival imperative. You will be sued some day. (It's not a matter of "if," but when.) During the discovery phase of the suit, you're going to provide (and also receive from the other side) bewilderingly immense amounts of data. Without good search technology, sifting through the data isn't just tedious but nightmarishly expensive.

I didn't get a chance to attend any e-discovery sessions at the Search Summit. It didn't matter. At lunch, I happened to sit down next to litigation technology consultant (and ESS presenter) Jeff Flax. We had an illuminating chat about search and discovery in the context of records retention.

Flax noted that many companies that have records retention policies aren't following them. He sees a "pack rat" syndrome: a tendency to let expired records remain in the morgue past the "save-till" date. The problem with this is that files that have been declared obsolete or marked for disposition, but have not yet been physically destroyed, are still subject to subpoena. "A good lawyer will ask for expired documents during discovery," Flax notes.

Lawyers are also demanding data in its "native state": Not text dumps or PDFs or other derivative forms of the data, but the data as it actually exists. "If I'm a lawyer and I'm requesting someone's e-mails on a certain subject," says Flax, "I don't want the e-mails as text files, I want the original e-mail archive in binary form so I can pick apart the bits and get at all the header and footer and other information in context."

Sometimes physical media must be handed over in discovery so that deleted files can be detected and recovered. "I've seen cases where browser search queries from many years back, supposedly no longer on disk, have been recovered forensically," Flax told me. "And then certain keyword clumps are detected, and those query patterns can become admissible in court."

It turns out that the data in a search index (the index built by a search engine) can often be used to reconstruct a document even after the document itself has been irretrievably lost. Takeaway: A document can't be considered fully destroyed until you've destroyed its search-index data as well. (I wonder how many retention policies take this into account? Doubtless very few.)

If you're concerned about e-mail retention (and if you're not, you should be), you might want to look into our latest offering: The E-mail Archiving & Management Report 2008.You'll find that the report divides vendors (roughly) along three lines: policy-centric, archive-centric, and SaaS-based. (You can see a free sample here.)

My advice? Never pass up a chance to have lunch with a litigation technology expert. You'll be inundated with food for thought.