The Exchange 2003 Seminar Series

I'll be at this event in Atlanta this Thursday morning ... looks like a great event.

Computerworld White Paper: Charting the Course: A Guide to Evaluating Business Intelligence Products

Good white paper on BI product evaluations based on (among others): Balanced scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs) Enterprise portals Querying,reporting and analysis of information Data warehouse modeling and deployment Meta-data management Transformations,cleansing and transfer of data Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Sullivan, Andy. Government computer surveillance rings alarm bells - Computerworld. May 27, 2004.

Interesting. If you think about it, computer-surveillance programs such as the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) initiative or other similar data-mining efforts are really a kind of mega-policy-enforcement initiative. Similar challenges to managing data within an enterprise. Just a bit broader scope and impact.

Evers, Joris. Q&A: Microsoft's Thompson talks about Exchange plans. Computerworld. May 26, 2004.

Microsoft's David Thompson (VP Exchange) discusses future versions of Exchange. Some quotes: "We would expect a release of Exchange around the time of the next release of Office." ... also mentions three roles in future Exchange as "edge, front-end and storage" .... also "the edge services will use SQL technology as part of some of the message-queuing support"

Semilof, Margie. Euthanized Kodiak signals shift for Exchange. SearchExchange.com. May 27, 2004.

This news has been on the street for some time already, but in case you've missed it, the codename "Kodiak" no longer refers to a future release of Exchange per se, but is (at best) being used as a catch-all term for a series of incremental releases in the future past the next major release.

Alliegro, Chris. Microsoft Business Solutions Product Roadmap Update. Directions on Microsoft. Feb. 16, 2004.

Discussion of Microsoft business solutions product roadmap. The FRx and Forecaster solutions relating to Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta are interesting as they demonstrate Microsoft analytic capabilities on the financial side of things which, depending on the actual implementation of "Project Green" in Longhorn timeframe as suggested in the article, may provide some benefit to non-financial apps running on top of Longhorn. All very far off and speculative but interesting nonetheless.

Your boss may be snooping on you - The Economic Times. May 20, 2004.

More press resulting from EMC/Legato's push into the Indian Exchange market. Will be interesting to watch.

Frauenheim, Ed. From nukes to Sarbanes-Oxley. CNET News.com. May 13, 2004.

Interesting article about Richard Reese, the CEO of Iron Mountain.

Jethwani, Hinesh. Warning: Your Emails & IMs Will be Recorded. CXO today. May 18, 2004.

Sending resumes and daily grapevine scuttlebutts through your mailbox is all set to become a luxury of the distant past, with email and Instant Message (IM) archiving solutions storming into the Indian market.

Askari, Zia. Email archiving soon to become a norm. CIOL IT Unlimited. May 14, 2004.

With email moving beyond convenience and into the role of a strategic communication tool, email communication is becoming an integral part of the decision-making process. More and more countries are going the US way in making it mandatory for companies to save email-based communication. "Email is increasingly coming under scrutiny in criminal investigations and legal proceedings. We have seen in the recent past in US how big companies played with the vital information. Communication based on email has evolved quite a lot and governments in countries like - Japan, Korea, Singapore and Vietnam - are making it mandatory for companies to store email records for a certain number of years," informed Legato Software intercontinental operations strategic development director PK Gupta.

Barth, Ken. Better Backup and Recovery: Know Your Data and Your Storage. CIO Today. May 20, 2004.

Performing a proactive diagnosis of data-management problems is essential prior to considering any acquisition of storage or backup resources. Armed with in-depth information, it is possible to make a responsible decision instead of reactively or reflexively purchasing hardware.

Shapiro, Dmitry. Instant messaging and compliance issues: What you need to know. SearchCIO.com. May 27, 2004.

Osterman Research states that in 2003, 90% of enterprises were using IM to some extent. A survey conducted by Osterman in 2003 revealed that more than 60% of participants cited AOL Instant Messenger as an IM tool workers use; more than 50% cited MSN Messenger. The reason why these public IM tools are used in such overwhelming numbers is simply because it gives users the ability to communicate externally with customers and partners. After all, consumer IM clients are already used by over 100 million users, so this is a logical and efficient means of messaging. The challenge for network managers is how to achieve a unified view of all IM activity on the network, for both corporate IM and public IM usage. The manager needs control over both systems to monitor a variety of compliance issues. Logging and archiving, monitoring, reporting and supervision must meet current and upcoming records retention, privacy and security regulations. The use of IM is growing exponentially faster than the use of e-mail, and IM is predicted to be as common as e-mail within two to three years. Companies need to act now to assess the state of consumer IM use within their organizations and put into place the necessary measures to make sure their IM use does not run afoul the compliance requirements set by Sarbanes-Oxley, financial, healthcare and state regulations.

O'Keefe, John. Messaging Market Assessment. Analyst Corner, CIO.com. May 26, 2004.

The messaging market assessment incorporates the unified messaging (UM) and instant messaging (IM) market. The UM market consists of platforms and services that integrate different modes of communication — e-mail, voice mail, mobile, and fax — that facilitate users' ability to remain in touch.

White Paper: Microsoft Exchange Server: Supporting Regulatory Compliance with Exchange Server 2003. Microsoft Corporation. April 19, 2004.

This white paper explains how to create common message archival systems and properly track and maintain data using solutions appropriate for your organization. Included in this document: Importance of Messaging Current Regulatory Environment Retaining Messaging Data

Foley, Mary Jo. Microsoft's 'PassPort' Out, Federation Services In. Microsoft Watch & eWeek. May 26, 2004.

Discussion of how "TrustBridge" technologies are gradually going to replace Passport.

CIO Insight/Gartner EXP. Research: Sarbanes-Oxley: Are You Ready to Comply? eWeek. May 18, 2004.

Some interesting stats in here on a recent Sarbanes-Oxley study: 88% of CIOs say their IT departments are very involved in compliance 67% say their companies are investing in financial systems to aid in compliance 59% have no IT executive specifically responsible for compliance 44% say their companies will require their CIOs to certify financial results

Schwartz, Karen. Regulation Compliance Tops Companies' Security Concerns. Ziff Davis Channel Zone. May 17, 2004.

Sarbanes-Oxley and lesser known government programs like Graham-Leach-Bliley and Basel II spell opportunity for savvy resellers and integrators.

Thompson, Carolyn. Spammer Sentenced to Seven Years in Prison. eWeek Messaging & Collaboration. May 27, 2004.

Jurors sentenced Carmack to seven years for convictions in March of forgery, identity theft and falsifying business records. He must serve a minimum of three years. Earthlink said Carmack ran 343 illegal e-mail accounts under false names from 2002 until his arrest last May, using them to send unsolicited e-mail ads for things like get-rich-quick schemes and sexual enhancers.

Press Release: Quest Software's solutions for Windows Management win multiple industry awards. May 26, 2004.

Quest Software's solutions for Windows Management win multiple industry awards. Quest MessageStats #1 Exchange Administration Solution of the Year for 2004 (MSD2D People's Choice); Aelita Recovery Manager for Exchange #1 Exchange Backup Solution of the Year for 2004 (MSD2D People's Choice) and Runner up Best Disaster Recovery Utility of 2004 (Fawcette Windows Server System Magazine Reader's Choice); Quest Spotlight on Exchange Runner Up Best Performance Optimization Tool (Fawcette Windows Server System Magazine Reader's Choice).

Dominguez, Alex. Judge orders Microsoft to search for e-mail evidence [Associated Press]. USA Today. May 24, 2004.

Interesting article. Microsoft has been ordered to search deleted email internally for messages containing certain keywords. I wonder what they're using to perform the search?

McBee, Jim. Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 24seven. Sybex. 2004.

Another great Exchange 2003 book just shipped yesterday ... Jim McBee's Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 24seven. Buy a copy today! Congratulations Jim!

Sengupta, David. Review of "Secure Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003" (Paul Robichaux) Windows & .NET Magazine Windows IT Library May 2004

My review of Paul's latest book "Secure Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003". Great book! Order a copy now!. Congratulations Paul!

Martin, Steven. Companies Are Learning To Deal With Compliance Issues. InformationWeek. May 20, 2004

Speakers at InformationWeek's Compliance Challenges and Governance Strategies Forum described how they're achieving compliance without disrupting their businesses.

Martin, Steven. Rules, Rules, Rules. InformationWeek. May 17, 2004

Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the USA Patriot Act, the California Security Breach Law, Securities and Exchange Commission rule 17a-4 -- these are but a few of the compliance challenges companies face today.

Quest Software: MessageStats & Aelita Recovery Manager for Exchange win People's Choice Awards 2004!

Just had to blog this. I'm currently product manager at Quest Software for a few Exchange management solutions including Quest MessageStats and Aelita Recovery Manager for Exchange. I'm proud to say that Quest MessageStats (just received the #1 Exchange Administration Solution 2004 People's Choice Award this week, and Aelita Recovery Manager for Exchange received the #1 Exchange Backup Solution 2004 People's Choice Award. Having worked with Exchange for over 7 years I can honestly say (with a stated bias of course) these are phenomenal solutions!

Wong, Carol. Playing by the Rules. Business Feature in Computerworld Malaysia - Vol. 14 Issue No. 7, 8 May - 7 June 2004

Good article on protecting confidential corporate info through IT security and secure access policies. Bit of a case study of Marditech. Touches on ISO 17799 a "detailed security standard encompassing services and software compliance, implementation and security risk analysis." Marditech's security policy covers "areas such as user accountability, privacy and confidentiality, software and hardware configuration, Internet access, e-mail usage and security, among others. "

Antiphishing.org - Stop Phishing and Email Scams

Home page for anti-phishing working group. Good study on phishing trends on this site along with some good related links and resources. [if you're wondering what "phishing" is (definition from this site), "Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them.]

Symantec acquires Brightmail - (United Press International)

Interesting play by Symantec. Brightmail has been a leader in the gateway policy enforcement space.

McCracken, Harry. Google's Gmail: Inventive, Influential ... and Not Too Invasive. PC World's Techlog. May 17, 2004.

Google may have stumbled into an unexpected privacy fracas when it announced that its Gmail service would display text ads based on keywords in your incoming e-mail's text.

Stonehouse, David. Behind the scenes. The Age Online - Icon. May 15, 2004..

Interesting quotes: "There is no doubt privacy at work is vaporising. A US study looking at the monitoring practices of nearly 200 companies found that 26 per cent of managers monitored employees' online activities all the time, not just when something gave them a reason to investigate. At the same time, a quarter of the organisations surveyed by Bentley College's Centre for Business Ethics have no procedures or safeguards to ensure the snooping isn't abused, and almost half of the firms lack written guidelines, policies or procedures for monitoring. Personal use of the internet at work is dubbed cyberbludging or cyberslacking and is widespread. Instead of chatting over the water cooler, workers are swapping emails or instant messages. Instead of going shopping on their lunch hour, employees stay at their desks and hit their high-speed connections. According to a survey done by the online career site Vault, seven in 10 workers use the office internet to hit news sites and one in four use it for shopping. A third fancy financial trading at their desks, 13 per cent download music and 4 per cent surf for porn. A third admit to an hour or more a day of personal surfing and another three in 10 confess that their web adventures and personal emails decrease their productivity on the job. More than half say they have been caught. Cyberbludging can hurt the corporate bottom line. The online monitoring company SurfControl estimated in 2000 that non-work-related internet use costs Australian businesses $300 million a year. "

Microsoft and SAP Raise the Stakes for Web Services for the Enterprise [Vendor Press Release]. Yahoo Finance. May 12, 2004.

Interesting read ... specifically the last bullet in the Technology Deliverables: "Integration between SAP NetWeaver, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Microsoft will deliver repository managers that integrate between SAP NetWeaver Knowledge Management, Windows SharePoint(R) Services and Microsoft Exchange Server. The repository managers are expected to be available in early 2005." [Thanks for William Lefkovics and Sig Weber for bringing this to my attention. :-) ]

Olsen, Stefanie. Judge ties antispammer's hands. CNET News.com. May 11, 2004.

Interesting story about how a Spammer has won a court injunction *against* an anti-Spam service provider alleging that the anti-Spam service provider (SpamCop) was blocking messages without providing any information concerning complaints to the Spammer. (confused yet? read on ...)

Semilof, Margie. Spam filter, Exchange 2003 SP1 to launch at TechEd. SearchExchange.com. May 4, 2004.

Featured discussion with Ed Wu (Product Manager, Exchange Server) concerning SP1 and what's entailed. Marketing launch of SP1 will be at TechEd this year (May in San Diego).