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Google Postini, an announcement 'about nothing'

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:14:00 -0400

In a week in which Symantec paid over half a billion dollars to buy a SaaS e-mail archiving service, Google Postini announced that they would now extend their email archiving retention period to a maximum of 10 years.

The Postini announcement is actually a non-announcement. I mean why would you consider using an archiving service that cannot keep content for archival lengths of time? Yet, this Seinfeld-like (it's about nothing) announcement got as much if not more coverage and pick up than the MessageLabs announcement.

There is no denying the power of a brand, and Google's brand is about as big as it gets. But the danger here that we can slip into an Orwellian world where news equals nothing, and that real news get's ignored. So just to be clear on this, ALL e-mail archiving systems should store mail for archival lengths of time, in some cases 20 years plus. If they can't they should not be touched with the proverbial bargepole.

To be sure, the Google Postini offering is one of the more intriguing offerings out there, though it certainly has its weakness as we detail in our technical evaluation of it. But its strengths may surprise you, they surprised us.

Symantec acquires MessageLabs

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:06:00 -0400

Last week Symantec agreed to purchase MessageLabs, the UK-based SaaS e-mail archiving service for $695 million, a truly astounding figure in today's difficult financial markets. It's a deal that asks as many questions as it answers.

On the one hand, it was little surprise that Symantec wanted to boost its SaaS offering, since despite bold assertions to the contrary, it has been clear that this was a hole for them, and one that they were unable to fix alone. But at this price, it is a hole that will need a whole lot of filling to get a return on the investment. That figure feels even greater when one considers that Symantec have not bought new archiving technology as such, for the little known secret is that MessageLabs actually relies on OEM'd technology from Fortiva to run. Fortiva itself was recently acquired by ProofPoint, and it remains in question whether this reliance on a rival's technology will remain viable in the long term.

In short Symantec paid $695 million just for a service, a service that relies on somebody else's technology, a service that is largely restricted to the UK. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Symantec is without doubt the e-mail archiving market leader, with Gartner estimating their share of market at 20%. But as customers our E-mail Archiving & Management services know all too well, market share does not equate to best fit or best buy. Though good technology comes from Symantec it is clearly not a always a good fit for buyers, particularly in a market that continues to deliver new, competitively priced, and innovative offerings.

In a sense then all this acquisition means is simply that people continue to bet big on e-mail archiving. It continues to grow as a area of importance for buyers (and vendors) around the globe, and as such we will continue to see the market evolve and grow rapidly. But remember, rapidly evolving markets can entail high risks for buyers. Our E-mail Archiving and Management Report points out that there are some good technology offerings out there. and e-mail archiving can represent one of the soundest of content investments, but it is not risk free, so evaluate the offerings very carefully before making your move.

In fact, you may well be surprised at just how radical the differences can be among the likes of Symantec, CA, Dell, Google and Autonomy. Some capture at the gateway, others by journaling, some provide stubbing, some don't. By default you can easily be dazzled, and end up buying great technology that turns out to be a poor fit for your particular needs.

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.

Announcing the E-mail Archiving and Management Report

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:29:00 -0400

This may well go down as the busiest period in CMS Watch's history as this month we launch yet another new technology evaluation report, The E-mail Archiving & Management Report 2008. From our release:

EAM technology has become critical to both commercial and government enterprises -- but for a variety of different and sometimes conflicting reasons. This has led to a similarly diverse set of approaches from EAM suppliers...

It's somewhat surprising that this report -- which provides comprehensive comparative evaluations of 14 leading EAM vendors -- is one of the first of its kind anywhere.

Subscribers, you will be getting your copy very shortly. Others can order a copy or download a free sample here.

The report loosely groups EAM vendors into three categories:

Policy-Centric: Autonomy, CA, Open Text, IBM, and Symantec

Archive-Centric: AXS-One, EMC, HP, Mimosa, and ZL Technologies

SaaS: Dell, Fortiva, Google, and Microsoft

The research has taken more than six months to complete, and in the process we have talked to many customers and users of EAM systems. The conversations were illuminating and we look forward very much to continue those discussions moving forward.