Last week, following on President Obama’s memorandum on managing government records, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a records management (RM) directive. The directive affects all US government executive departments and agencies and applies to all federal records.

This significant effort to reform RM policies and practices includes a focus on digital government with a requirement to eliminate paper and use electronic recordkeeping where feasible, manage both permanent and temporary email records electronically, and take steps to demonstrate compliance with federal RM statutes and regulations such as designating a senior official to oversee RM programs and proving appropriate training.

The directive also identifies specific actions that will be taken by NARA and other agencies to support federal government records management programs. Critically, these include revised guidance for transferring permanent electronic records; email guidance; research into automated management of email, social media, and other types of digital record content; and embedding RM needs into cloud architectures. Further, it calls for investigating secure cloud-based service options to store and manage unclassified electronic records, and a series of steps to promote partnerships and better serve agencies.

Cloud-based alternatives to message archiving are an increasingly attractive option for enterprise buyers. Budgetary constraints, coupled with increasing compliance regulations and eDiscovery needs, are compelling companies to search for message archiving solutions that offer a broad set of functionality at an attractive price. With today’s extended enterprise, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is top of mind as companies look to garner the cost-saving benefits and deployment advantages that this model can deliver. Strong adoption is well on its way. Among organizations rolling out message archiving in 2011, over one-fifth plan to implement a cloud-based solution, and I expect this number will only grow in 2012. For an evaluation of key vendors and key market shifts, Forrester clients can access the market overview on SaaS-based message archiving that we published last month.

A cloud-based solution is a viable solution for many, but message archiving professionals shouldn’t see these offerings as a panacea. Before embarking on taking message archiving to the cloud, make sure you’ve done your homework on vendor and contractual issues and continue to address the strategy, policy, and process challenges as you would with other in-house alternatives. Whether you’re rolling out your first message archiving solution or are planning to carry over your legacy application, make sure you're taking the necessary precautions to make sure that your implementation is a success.

Symantec announced today that it plans to acquire privately-held Clearwell Systems. The $390 million deal significantly strengthens Symantec’s eDiscovery portfolio. With annual sales of $56 million and more than 400 enterprise and law firm customers, Clearwell has traditionally focused on processing, search, and review to support eDiscovery and has more recently offered collection and preservation capabilities. Symantec and Clearwell have a long-standing partnership with several joint customers across their archiving and eDiscovery offerings.

 My preliminary perspective is that this acquisition will ultimately be a positive move for current and prospective enterprise customers. The three main reasons:

• The intersection of archiving and eDiscovery is critical. Beyond IT and compliance objectives, easing eDiscovery burdens is a top driver for message archiving adoption. In addition to aiming to cut surging messaging volumes, enabling faster and more cost-effective response to litigation and investigations, message archiving decision-makers seek better integration with eDiscovery applications. In our Q1 2011 Global Message Archiving Online Survey, we found that 82% of survey respondents perceive that provider support for collection, review, and other steps in the eDiscovery process is an important buying consideration. Clearwell's eDiscovery offerings augment Symantec’s Enterprise Vault eDiscovery capabilities.

Earlier this month, Microsoft disclosed details on Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) slated to ship later this year. Among the various fixes and improvements outlined in the announcement, Microsoft’s plans for archiving and eDiscovery enhancements caught my attention. Earlier this year, I wrote about Microsoft “dipping its toe” into these waters with the initial release of Exchange 2010, and am encouraged that the vendor is taking the market’s message archiving needs seriously with some promising, incremental steps.

Some of the key archiving message archiving advances planned for SP1 are:

• Storage flexibility for a user’s Personal Archive. With the initial release of Exchange 2010, Personal Archives can only be stored in the same mailbox database as the original mailbox. SP1 will introduce the ability to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox, supporting tiered storage options for archived mail.
• Support for access to a user's Personal Archive with Outlook 2007. In the currently shipping version of Exchange 2010, organizations need either Outlook 2010 or OWA to view archived content. The planned additional client flexibility will be a plus for many, but keep an eye on timing since the announcement states that this will be available in the “SP1 timeframe” (allowing for some vendor wiggle room) and note that Personal Archive functionality in Exchange 2010 currently requires Enterprise CALs.

  by Brian W. Hill

IBM’s announcement this week outlining the vendor’s archiving vision and strategy is ambitious and far reaching in scope. It’s encouraging to see IBM working across its different internal divisions to deliver solutions that address specific enterprise needs (e.g., message archiving, file system archiving, and SharePoint archiving) while providing a framework and a set of capabilities for broader enterprise archiving.

My initial feedback on IBM’s strategic announcements is positive. Here’s why:

• Information and technology chaos reign today. Enterprises struggle with IT environments comprised of multiple, fragmented archiving, records management, and eDiscovery applications. Historically, organizations have deployed these applications to address specific needs such as message archiving to improve operational performance or records management to meet regulatory requirements for physical records. But because these deployments have typically evolved organically and in isolation from one another, enterprises grapple with fragmentation, with disparate systems that lack consistent policies and entail significant ongoing TCO and legal risk. In our Q3 2009 survey, 60 percent of records management stakeholders rated synchronizing eDiscovery, records management, and archiving during the eDiscovery process as “challenging” or “very challenging.” IBM clearly understands this scenario and is aligning its offerings and messaging to meet these enterprise needs.