“The 3 Reasons To Archive – Capacity & PSTs, Migration to Exchange 2010 & Compliance”  Download from here..

Requests we hear from email administrators always include the need to reduce:

• Mailbox sizes and backup/restore times
• Migration cost, complexity and timescales
• The legal risks associated with emails

Download here.

We have detailed these issues in the White Paper and explained how an email archiving solution can solve each problem. More importantly, we demonstrate the additional business benefits that can be achieved through:

• Automated elimination of PSTs
• Reduced data capacity requirements prior to migration. (All versions of Exchange require migration between versions so if you archive first, 90% of your data is already in the archive and doesn’t need migrating).
• Compliance by capturing only the data that is necessary

ReSoft has invested heavily in technologies to assist our Customers in being able to better manage and optimize their Security, Email and SharePoint environments.

Our focus for 2012 is found in the free 2012 Solutions Catalog, driven by Customer feedback as to their priorities for the year.  These include:

• Migrating Legacy Notes Apps to SharePoint
• Identity Governance Solutions
• PST management & elimination
• Search/Discovery of SharePoint & Email 
• DLP Classification of email to prevent the “Email Oops!”
• User-driven Distribution List Delegation & Provisioning

View the 2012 Solutions Catalog

Since releasing the PST 10 Point Plan White Paper we have had significant interest from organizations looking to understand more about how to overcome the challenges of identifying, classifying and eliminating PST files from the network.

In this webinar you will learn:

• Understanding the Drivers of PST Elimination
• Knowing the 10 Elements of PST Elimination
• Shaping a PST Elimination Project with PST Enterprise
• Comparing PST Enterprise to Microsoft PST Capture

As a take-away, we will be giving copies of the Building a Cost Case for PST Elimination White Paper for you to work with.  

You can register for the webinar here

Since releasing the PST 10 Point Plan White Paper we have had significant interest from organizations looking to understand more about how to overcome the challenges of identifying, classifying and eliminating PST files from the network.

In this webinar you will learn:

• Understanding the Drivers of PST Elimination
• Knowing the 10 Elements of PST Elimination
• Shaping a PST Elimination Project with PST Enterprise
• Comparing PST Enterprise to Microsoft PST Capture

As a take-away, we will be giving copies of the Building a Cost Case for PST Elimination White Paper for you to work with.  

You can register for the webinar here

View this post at ENow 

Like all academic establishments, the University in recent years has seen unprecedented growth in the size and volume of email not only as coursework files but right across the infrastructure, as departments have become more reliant on large image-based files, PDFs and PPTs. Dave Dickinson is the Universities’ Information Systems Developer responsible for all email system infrastructure and takes up the story:

“We were in the process of migrating from a UNIX-based email system. This was an effective, simple, pure flat-file email system that was not particularly resource intensive, but it did not offer the extra features, such as calendaring and workflow that we deemed as essential. We therefore embarked on the move to Microsoft Exchange 2003 and then later to Exchange 2007.”

There were a number of changes that the University had to adopt as part of the migration to Microsoft Exchange. The first was to include high-performing shared storage into the infrastructure and the second was to identify an effective archiving solution. Critical requirements for this solution included both the ability to handle the increasingly large volumes of email and the capacity to reduce the burden of Exchange which demanded far greater resources than their Unix-based system. After examining three market-leading solutions, the team opted for C2C’s ArchiveOne solution due to its flexibility and seamless end user experience.

With 7TB of primary storage assigned to run Exchange, it had been critical that the archiving solution quickly and effectively moved data to the archive store reducing the impact on primary storage. ArchiveOne stored the files in a compressed format so the demand on secondary storage was reduced as well. On top of this infrastructure challenge, there was a cultural challenge that users needed to overcome. The previous UNIX-based system offered users unlimited email space, so they became accustomed to keeping an unrestricted amount of email. The transition to Exchange with its mailbox quotas had caused users to implement PST files resulting in difficulties with backup and data discovery. The installation of ArchiveOne provided the management team with an archiving solution that meant they seamlessly regained control over mailbox stores and quotas. A solution of policy enforcement was created for staff and associate mailboxes, comprising approximately 5000 mailboxes.

Critically, ArchiveOne has enabled automated policies with two standard policies in place. For average mailbox users, any emails older than 12 months are automatically archived and compressed to an archive store. For those ‘power users’ whose mailboxes regularly exceed 750MB, ArchiveOne automates an archiving policy of six months. These archiving policies enable the email system to run at an optimal 70% capacity of primary disk.

For users, the process is simple, they simply click on the email in the inbox, and the full email is located and retrieved seamlessly from the store.

For Dave and the team, the ability to manipulate and customise archiving policies has proven invaluable. “When we initially installed the archiving system, we installed five archive repositories. Since then we have installed additional archives on an annual basis. What we found when using ArchiveOne is that its policies were flexible and adaptable to our needs. For instance, we would be able to move to a six month repository cycle easily if data growth required, and we are able to extend policies to individual users with no impact.”

One of the most significant benefits of archiving is reducing the impact of an Exchange upgrade. Moving the majority of data to the archive before the migration alleviates the need for the data to be moved when upgrading between the Exchange versions. Since the majority of data had already been moved prior to the upgrade from Exchange 2003 to 2007, time and management overhead was significantly reduced. Indeed, so has storage capacity declined. Two years down the line, ArchiveOne has alleviated the need for any further primary storage, ensuring major cost savings and fewer problems for the Infrastructure team.

For users with ArchiveOne, archiving is seamless and automatic, and of course, now falls within the blanket protection of the Exchange backup. With the majority of data in the archive, the benefits to an Exchange upgrade have already been realised. In 2012 the University will upgrade to Exchange 2010 and the benefits of not having to move all the data will be realised once more. The process will be relatively quick and less demanding on the University.

In conclusion, Dave comments, “Put simply, I couldn’t imagine not having ArchiveOne operating seamlessly behind the university’s email infrastructure. It is an easy-to-use, flexible and valuable tool.”

More at http://www.resoftco.com/archive-one-suite

The University’s IT team selected Mailscape after researching an extensive list of exchange monitoring solutions.  Having recently migrated to Exchange 2010 (from Exchange 2003), the University’s IT team quickly found themselves managing a much more complex environment and wanted to take proactive measures to monitor the new environment.

Steve Kilburn, Infrastructure Consultant for Leeds MET, explains, “Having made our way through a list of monitoring solutions and evaluating several products, only Mailscape ticked all the boxes.  It was unique in its breadth of coverage across monitoring and reporting, and is a complete packaged solution”.

As a small team managing the ever increasing demands of IT within the University, Steve has rolled out the Mailscape dashboard to each member of the core IT team who use it daily to monitor Exchange, troubleshoot any issues, and take any preventative actions when needed.

Leeds MET uses Mailscape’s rich exchange reporting tools to present high level information to Management, and to help the IT team manage and enhance the messaging service.

Going forward, Leeds MET is planning to take advantage of Mailscape’s customized dashboard for their Helpdesk team to proactively manage mailbox quotas, a task that was difficult to handle before using Mailscape.

More at http://www.resoftco.com/mailscape-monitoring-reporting

But it’s not just about the price!  Every time you upgrade, backup, restore, switch or add users to your email system, you must examine your fully loaded costs and consider the delivery alternatives.

Join us at a webinar on Wed April 4th at 1pm EST to learn more about why organizations like General Motors & Roche Pharmaceuticals have already built the business case for transitioning to Google Email & Google Apps.

The Gmail & Apps Business Case

The webinar is presented by Bill O’Brien, Principal Consultant at Commercium Technologies who has been instrumental in many migrations from legacy email to the Google cloud service. Areas discussed will include:

• the true cost of providing email service 
• the planning considerations for migrating to the cloud
• review of the powerful real-time collaboration tools that are part of the Google Apps suite of applications 

Free Takeaway ROI Tool

All attendees will receive a copy of Commercium’s “Google ROI Business Case Builder Tool”.

The DLP system is expected to automatically identify all sensitive content, which requires IT administrators to translate business processes and policies into automated rules for every data loss scenario. This is an impossible task, which usually results in overly restrictive rules that block non-sensitive data (false positives) or overly permissive rules that mistakenly release sensitive data (false negatives). The best way to address this problem is for organizations to identify their information appropriately.

The sensitivity of each piece of information must be identified, or ‘classified’. Information classification is crucial for proper handling, and for the ultimate security of an enterprise’s information. Classification provides context to unstructured data such as email and business documents, making it possible for DLP solutions to know how to protect your organization’s sensitive information.

[Learn More]

More solution information

The biggest obstacle to eliminating PSTs from your organization is often just getting the project off the ground.   We have been working with our partner C2C on PST problems for more than 10 years, it has taken until recently for Microsoft to admit they are a serious issue. 

We know how to tackle the problem.  Here’s a toolkit to help you create and manage a PST elimination project: 

• Re-emphasize why PSTs cause problems.  Provide your manager with the foundation for your project plan 
• Compare the costs associated with a PST elimination project manually vs our approach.  This will help you decide your strategy & justify the project costs to your management
• Review this 10 point plan for eliminating PSTs
• Here are the major issues related to migrating and eliminating PSTs with respect to Microsoft PST Capture and C2C’s PST Enterprise, this will help you understand what can be achieved and what to look out for.  Read the PST Migration Considerations whitepaper.
• Compare C2C Systems PST Enterprise and Microsoft’s PST Capture comparison chart 
• For more detailed information please read further PST problems