The perception of risk issues I covered in Risk Perception in Data Centers suggests that email archivers could be successful selling to SMBs - Roger, love to get your take on that. Yet my experience with SMBs is that they are much more interested in getting more competitive than they are in buying insurance, which is essentially what email archiving for e-discovery is.

So as a matter of marketing strategy, I wouldn’t expect the scary stuff to work very well with SMBs. With the F1000 you have a solid business case - assuming you’ve done your homework - and I would focus on them. If I *were* intent on cracking the SMB market I would put together a package of services for data risk assessment that VARs could resell and then, based on the assessment, I’d expect product sales to follow.

Chuck, I agree that it appears the secular trend is moving in a number of directions, but I’m not sure I agree with you. I think that it is highly likely that within 10 years the regulatory environment will essentially insist that all publicly traded companies maintain all records, including customer data, manufacturing and distribution data, emails, financials, HR and so forth for at least seven years, while liability case law will push it out even further. At some point, CIOs will be asking which is cheaper: getting rid of old data or just storing it forever?

CIOs would be fools to take responsibility for all aspects of information management and I think there is almost no chance that the lawyers would let them, let alone the LOBs. For all the talk of “aligning IT with business strategies” over the last several decades, it hasn’t happened yet. There are very good structural reasons for why it never will absent substantial rethinking of the IT/LOB relationship.

BTW, Dave Hitz had a good post about info “ownership” at Data and Ethics.

I do hold EMC to a high standard because I believe the company has the resources to truly lead the industry. So it frustrates me no end to see EMC follow the path that led IBM into crisis. I’d love to see EMC be wildly successful again. I’m just not seeing the thinking that is going to take them there. Maybe you can prove me wrong.

And thanks for reading StorageMojo. I see I have a lot of regular readers at EMC, so I can’t fault your taste in fine storage blogging.

Robin

Rather than look at the specifics of FRCP, I am on the personal warpath that the meta-trend is ultimately more of concern to IT professionals, e.g. IT is going to be ultimately held responsible for all aspects of corporate information management - not only the traditional cost-reduction/service level aspects, but more and more aspects of risk management (e.g. FRCP), and eventually value creation from existing corporate information.

Maybe FRCP will bite you, maybe it won’t. But if it’s not FRCP, the next legal development regarding information management certainly will.

I believe that — in the next few years — there will be a law along the lines of “if I’m your customer, and you store my personal information, I have the right to have it encrypted at all times, and to request an audit trail of who’s seen it and for what purpose, if I so desire”. With FRCP, we’re just one step closer to that world.

Good blog, enjoy reading it (except for the EMC rants). Keep up the good work!

Lets say there is a harassment complaint at your company that involves an out-of-state employee. Good chance that could end up in federal courts. The prosecution could demand a copy of all emails from the harasser to the harassee. You say, “Ummm…. we don’t keep track of emails.” The prosecution demands under FRCP that you look in every PC and file to find them. And, to make it worse, the prosecution asks for sanctions to make your claim harder.

This is all legit. “Safe harbor” probably won’t protect you because you do not delete all emails, such as those key contracts.

In other words, for even small/medium companies, email has become the journal of record for business and it is important to find a way to keep track.