Defining and enforcing records management policies for e-mail can be a real pain in the <you know what> without having some kind of automated approach.

Don't just take my word for it, industry watcher Michael Osterman (of the eponymously named firm Osterman Research) pointed this out in his May 2009 “Messaging Archiving and Document Management Markets Trends, 2009-20112” report:

“Many organizations have yet to define an email retention policy. More than one‐quarter of organizations have not yet established any sort of email retention policy despite the fact that there are a growing body of statutory requirements and legal obligations to preserve business records, including those stored in email. Among the nearly three‐quarters of organizations that have established an email retention policy, only two‐thirds of these organizations indicate that their users are fully aware of the policy.”

Even David Ferris (of a similarly eponymously named firm Ferris Research) recently posted a blog...er…posting about highlighting that:

“Most organizations are unclear about the retention policies they should adopt. That slows the deployment of archiving technology.”

Clearly, having a familiar approach, that integrates with our user’s daily workflow for managing their inboxes, is an important step in the right direction for getting this one right. You know, something that appears right in Outlook and Outlook Web App.

With Exchange 2010, you get this with our new Retention Policies capabilities (a part of the new integrated e-mail archiving, retention, and discovery I’ve been discussing for a while now).  Gone are those “Managed Folders” we intro’ed in Exchange 2007 (although if you really want them, the feature is still there).  Instead, Retention Policies provide a way more flexible way for you (and if you so choose, your users) to tag folders and/or individual mailbox items (e.g., e-mail messages, notes, contacts, et al) with settings for:

• how long the message (or item) should be retained, and
• what action to take when this item reaches the end of the retention period (e.g., moved to the archive, deleted, etc.)

Oh, it’s worth noting that an Exchange 2010 Retention Policy is a collection of Retention Tags that are applied to mailboxes. Each mailbox can have a maximum of one Retention Policy associated with it at a time.

And, the Exchange admins have three types of Retention Tags they can implement with :

• Retention Policy Tag (or RPT) – for setting retention policies on default folders (e.g., Inbox, Junk Mail, Sent Items, etc.).  All messages and items in this default folders will inherit the folder’s RPT. Users cannot change the RPT, but instead can apply a different “Personal Tag” (see below) to items that live inside the default folder. So, if you have a RPT set on the Inbox folder of “Delete in 60 days”, any message in the user’s Inbox will automatically be tagged with this policy (i.e., “Delete in 60 days”).  Each supported default folder can have up to one RPT linked to it in a single Retention Policy.
  
  
• Default Policy Tag (or DPT) – for applying retention settings to “untagged items”.  Basically, if there are messages that have not already inherited a Retention Tag from the folder it’s located in or the user hasn’t explicitly tagged it with a “Personal Tag” (see below), this is your policy.  It’s hugely recommended you only have one of these in a Retention Policy.
  
  
• Personal Tags (or Personal Tags) – here’s where you can created additional tags that your users can apply to their own customer folders (as well as individual items).  They can do this in either Outlook 2010 or Outlook Web App. In our demo environment, we have created such tags, like “Acquisitions, keep for 5 years”

“What happens if a user moves a messages from a default folder (or really any folder location) to another folder?”

Well, the item effectively inherits the tag applied to the folder it is moved to.  And if the item has had tag already assigned to it (e.g., you tag a message in the Inbox with a Personal Tag with the action “Move to Archive in 1 year”), the explicitly assigned tag takes precedence over the folder’s assigned tag.  Referring again to our example, if this message tagged by the user with “Move to Archive in 1 year” is “dragged and dropped” into a folder with a policy of “Move to Archive in 30 days”, the item (and only that item) retains the “Move to the Archive in 1 year” tag. 

“When and how do all of these policies and actions get processed?” 

The Managed Folder Assistant (yes, even though it’s not really the same Managed Folders from Exchange 2007) runs daily (by default between 1am and 4am) to process all of the messages.  It either tags items with the right Retention Tag or it executes the item’s retention action for those that have passed their retention age.

“What if I need to prevent these actions because the user is now involved in a legal issue that requires the company to retain all of their e-mail, etc.?”

Here, you can place the user’s mailbox on Retention Hold and suspend the processing of the Retention Policies for their mailbox.  This, of course, doesn’t prevent the user from manually changing or deleting items. If you need to preserve the user’s mailbox content, here’s where the new Exchange 2010 Legal Hold feature would be the right fit.

When toggled on for a user’s mailbox, Legal Hold captures any deleted or edited items into a special folder that’s neither accessible nor changeable by the user (basically a “dumpster for the dumpster”).

These items show back up (whether in the user’s primary mailbox or personal archive) during multi-mailbox searches, in a special “Recoverable Items” folder in the search results.

Well, this is a lot to chew on, and I totally recommend you play around with these settings using the one of the many “Try It” options up on http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/try-it.aspx.

-- hama

Well, it’s been a week and change since we formally launched Exchange Server 2010 at this year’s edition of TechEd Europe. The highlight of this announcement (in this humble blogger’s opinion) was the Exchange 2010 demo delivered in Stephen Elop’s keynote address to over 5,500 #TEE09 attendees. 

As a quick aside, that TechEd keynote hall (Hall 25) at the Messe Berlin was HUGE! 

I swear it could have been a zeppelin hanger at one point in its history.

Moving on…our Exchange product management team’s fearless leader, Julia White, was on stage with Stephen and did a bang up job landing a full range of Exchange 2010 IT Pro and user experiences.  In case you haven’t had a chance to see if for yourself, you can watch the replay below (fast forward to 37:15 if you’d like to get right to it):

You can also watch it from the “The New Efficiency” Virtual Launch Experience via this link:
http://vepexp.microsoft.com/thenewefficiency/?s=16828

“What was in that demo environment?” you may ask.

I’m glad you asked, because I was the proverbial “Wizard of Oz” for this gig. 

That’s right.

Heck, I’m even from the “Emerald City”! (Yes, that was a stretch, because I’m a New Yorker).

For nearly a month prior to November 9th, I drove the process of defining and building out the demo rig Stephen and Julia showed off that faithful day (with a bunch of help from fellow Exchange TPMers Astrid “It’s All About the DAGs” McClean and Ankur “Can You Read Me Now? Good! – Voice Mail Preview” Kothari).

You may recall my previous posting that took place shortly after I surfaced from my demo build lab (a/k/a our GM’s office).  That was the day we had all of the demo gear boxed up, and shipped out for Berlin. 

That’s always a little rough, bidding farewell to your demo rig, because you never really, really know what will show up on the other end.  That’s not to say stuff ends up in the demo builder’s equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.  You just always need to have your plans B through Z  at the ready.  In this case, my plan Z was to hightail it to a former boss’ home outside of London, England if the previous 25 plans failed.

I did take advantage of our killer Disk2vhd utility from Sysinterals (Thank you Mr. Russinovich) to take VHD snaps of the 5 systems.  That was plan C.

Here’s a little bit of detail of the “behind the scenes” for this demo. 

First, here is my “high tech” architecture diagram that I put together using Visio…er… PowerPoint:

Yup, we had a nice collection of hardware backstage (and a second set running just in case we needed to failover due to demo gremlins).

It’s truly amazing to see the backstage at any of these major keynote events.  It’s like a mission control, television studio, and Fry’s warehouse all wrapped into one.

The ten minute demo highlighted a ton of features around three major “New Efficiency” themes (as well as Exchange 2010 product pillars)

Flexible and Reliable

• Online Move Mailbox – Julia kicked the demo off talking about the new efficiencies to be had with our new Mailbox Move capability.  Users can stay connected throughout the move process (seriously!).  To prove the point, Julia kicked off a mailbox move of the very mailbox she would be using throughout the demo.  Funnily enough, one customer though we “scripted/faked” the mailbox move, since Julia’s experience was uninterrupted.   No faking here!
  

Anywhere Access

• Conversation View – Kicking off the mailbox move, Julia walked folks through the various Conversation View features (including Ignore Conversation) using Outlook 2010.  One of the first round of applause (and there were around 10!) came when Julia made one of those very annoying conversations disappear with the Ignore button.
  
• MailTips – Seriously, who doesn’t like MailTips?  You know, those little speed bumps Exchange throws up right before you click Send. We got to see a few different MTs demoed, including what I like to call (and even got Stephen to say!) “X-Ray vision” into distribution groups. 
  
• Voice Mail Preview – Neat stuff. Get a speech-to-text preview of your voice mail messages.  During this part of the demo, Julia highlighted the fact you can click anywhere on the text preview, and the audio file will start playing from that point (lovely blurry picture from the replay video): 
  
  
  
  So, my voice (since it was a voice mail I left Julia) bellowed out across the gigantic Hall 25 when Julia sort to find out if my message said “Exchange launch” instead of “Exchange lunch” (Honestly, both sound good right now).
  
  A funny aside: during the demo, my good bud and old Windows Server colleague David Lowe sent me two text messages during my voice mail cameo:
  
  ”Dude! You’re <bleeping> famous!” followed by
  “Why do you sound like Stephen Hawking?”
  
  Thanks, David!
  
  Stephen joined in the demo fun when he then showed the same voice mail preview experience using a Windows phone (running Windows Mobile 6.5):
  
    
  
  Stephen also highlighted the new Outlook Mobile (for Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5) including showing off Conversation View on the mobile device.
  
• Outlook Web App – Julia then took the opportunity to show off our third of “three screens”: the new Outlook Web App.  She highlighted not only the Conversation View, but also our new integrated Office Communications Server 2007 R2 IM and presence features, the ability to send and receive SMS Text Messages, and other “universal Inbox” experiences.

Protection and Compliance

• Transport Protection Rules- But wait, there’s more!  Julia than switched gears to talk about a range of features that can help customers better manage risk.  Specifically, the new Transport Protection Rules that can automatically apply Rights Management policies to messages while they are in transit. 
  
  The demo showed Julia sending an e-mail from Outlook Web App that is protected by a Transport Rule configured to watch for the phrase “launch plans”:
  
  
  
  Not only did the e-mail get automatically protected (in Transport), Stephen opened the e-mail in Firefox and was able to read the message because of our new native support for IRM (that’s just another name for Rights Management) in Outlook Web App!
  
  Stephen adlibbed an additional demo step in a rehearsal that we ended up adding to the demo.  Basically, he tried to copy the phrase “Meeting Agenda” from the Rights protected e-mail, and paste it into the Outlook Web App search box.  Even in Firefox, and even though this is a web browser (with no plug-ins for IRM) application, the Rights Management policy was enforced!  I told Stephen that was a great addition to the demo, since the week prior (on the Bus Tour) many people asked “What about cut and paste?”, and Stephen showed off the experience to 5,500 folks (plus everyone who’s watched the replay)!
  
• Hold Policy and Multi-Mailbox Search – Well, the demo story arc allowed Julia to show off some of our e-mail archiving, retention, and discovery features (my personal fav!).  Since Stephen both deleted and purged (from his recoverable items) an important e-mail message, Julia had a chance to demonstrate the new Hold Policy and Multi-Mailbox Search:
  
  
  
• Online Move Mailbox (Reprise) – Guess what? The entire demo was conducted while Julia’s mailbox was being moved from CONTOSOEX02 to CONTOSOEX01!  I was little disappointed to learn from one customer that he thought we faked it (as mentioned earlier).  Julia runs Get-MoveRequestStatistics at the end of the demo, and we see that the move was only 66% complete, “yet [she] remained connected and productive.”

Well, I could go on and on about the demo, but I’ll let the work stand on its own.  It was HUGELY rewarding to work on this (even got to grow a beard), and how proud I am of the results. 

Time to get back to digging out and getting ready for some vacation!

-- hama

Yup, I’m a few days behind on my daily Bus Tour postings. 

The good news is: I survived the Tour, and it was truly amazing experience.  

Before I share my thoughts and feelings about what life on “The Bus” was like, I still need to catch you up on days 6 and 7 of the tour.

When we last met, I had left Munich for Vienna.  This was one of the first times, during my tenure on the Tour, that we slept the whole night on the Bus.  We departed Munich with enough time to make Vienna in the wee hours of the morning.  The Bus parked at a school, where we’d end up presenting later in the morning, and we slept through until morning.

After that, we briefly visited a nearby hotel to shower up and have some breakfast, before presenting our first gig of the day in Vienna.

Anyhow, here’s my “Day 6” video:

I’ll be splicing together my Day 7 video right after we finish up the keynote here at TechEd Europe.  Stay tuned for more details on that, and lift behind the big stage!

-- hama

Our Wednesday was spent in beautiful Munich, Germany and included getting some much needed post-bus ride rest before our event at the Campus.

The drive to Munich was good fun, as we kicked back in the main lounge area of “The Bus”, including watching “In Bruges” - a DVD Bob brought along.

Here’s my next installment of my video fun (note: it is a bit more random than the others):

-- hama

It’s almost 1am, and I am relaxing in the forward lounge of the second deck of the Career Express. 

Based on the Live Bus Tracker, we’re a little under 2 hours away from Vienna:

I finally got my rented air card working again, and now have “screaming” Internet access, so I briefly checked my e-mail and caught on the news. 

Everyone else is already sleeping in their bunks, except for the driver <g>, and I’m about to make my way to mine. 

Here’s a random shot from my “Jumbocruiser” perch:

Good night from “The Bus”.

-- hama

Gutten Tag!

Day 4 of the European adventure takes us to Frankfurt, Germany.  The journey has been a lot of fun, albeit tiring.  Once more here’s some video evidence of what’s been happening on the road:

And, thanks to everyone who has watched the videos and provided the feedback about the volume levels!

-- hama

Today, I officially kicked off my participation as a crew member of “The Bus Tour” (exciting, eh?)!

We started the day bidding farewell to contest winner Christopher, who was heading back to France ahead of TechEd.  And, then Ken, Stephen, and I headed over to Compu’Train-BvO to do our first presentations of the day (and my first of the Tour).  Following the training, the team at Compu’Train-BvO gave each us an awesome gift pack of treats from all around the Netherlands.  A very appreciated present!

What ensued was an action packed, multi-location day of “The Bus” gigs across the greater Amsterdam area, including Dell and Info Support.

Once more, I’ll leave the rest to my third video:

There was a moment of panic as I briefly lost my business card case (a nice present from me misses).  Luckily, it was just hidden beneath the presentation podium at Info Support. 

The road brings many, many adventures! 

I think I need to pick-up a copy of “On the Road”.  My copy of this favorite Kerouac book is sitting a few thousand miles away.

-- hama

After having a nice stroll around the city of Amsterdam on Saturday, and then a relaxing boat ride through the famous canals on Sunday, I boarded “The Bus” for the very first time!

At approximately 830p on Sunday evening, eight members of “The Crew” (not the motley kind) left the Golden Tulip Hotel in Amsterdam for a short bus ride to Utrecht.  During my brief bus test flight, I got a chance to get to know our two contest winners: Bob Simms and Christopher Maneu.  The three of us, chillin’ in one of the two upstairs lounges were regaled with stories of previous famous bus tenants by one of the two drivers (both of whom are named David – talk about HA/DR for drivers!).

After about 30 minutes or so, Ken Rosen, Stephen  Rose, and I (clearly lacking a flowery surname) were dropped off at one hotel, so we can support a gig at Compu’Train-BVO (one of two events happening simultaneously on Monday morning).  The rest of the bus gang continued on to another hotel so they can staff the other event at iSential.

We’ll regroup in the afternoon for an exclusive (“By Private Invitation Only”) event at the local Dell offices in Amsterdam.  [Cue Ian’s inner monologue: “Speaking of Dell in Amsterdam, I wonder if the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” guy is now based here (wink, wink)”]

After that, we hit up one more event at Info Support before I make my inaugural overnight journey on “The Bus”.  Then it’s off to Frankfurt for a few events on Tuesday. 

Luckily (I think), I’ve been challenge by a bit of jetlag, so hopefully the gentle/bumpy movements of the bus will rock me to sleep.

Ah, once more I compiled a brief video montage of the day’s experience:

Okay, it’s fairly early and I need to reboot my laptop in Windows Server 2008 R2 to prep my demo VHDs for my first talk on Exchange 2010.

Should be good fun!

-- hama

And now, a quick “commercial break” from my planned daily blathering about “Ian’s European Workation” (NOTE: The previous was a lame attempt to parody National Lampoon's European Vacation):

On Wednesday, November 4th, David Ferris of Ferris Research will be conducting a 30 minute webcast on our integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities introduced in Exchange Server 2010.

Here’s what the folks from Ferris have to say about the webcast:

Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Archiving: The Complementary Role of Third-Party Solutions
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
8:30 a.m. Pacific, 11:30 a.m. Eastern, 4:30 p.m. U.K., 5:30 p.m. CET. One-half hour.

On April 15, 2009, Microsoft announced that Exchange 2010 will have built-in support for archiving. Though Microsoft has been slow to reveal details about the new offering, its announcement is shaking the archiving market and the adjacent markets for e-discovery and compliance.

Customers are considering whether to adopt Microsoft’s solution and, if appropriate, whether to migrate away from currently deployed solutions. They are deferring purchases of archiving solutions until Microsoft clarifies its offering. And archiving, e-discovery, and compliance vendors are reevaluating their technology and sales messages.

In this webcast and its companion white paper, David Ferris cuts through the confusion about Exchange 2010 and explains what the product’s archiving features do, what they don’t do, and how the technology is likely to evolve. A Q&A session will give attendees the opportunity to ask questions.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft is a sponsor of both the webcast and the white paper (as are metalogix, smarsh, and Waterford Technologies).

To register, visit here.

-- hama

The morning after watching a really exciting, albeit frustrating nil-nil result, Sounders FC MLS playoff match at Qwest Field, I boarded a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

This is the first of many stages of travel I’ll embark on over the next two weeks.   And, instead of using the “written word” to describe the experience, here’s a short video I pieced together using my Flip Mino HD and Windows Live Movie Maker:

Since editing this video, I have had a nap and showered off the 9+ hours of air travel. Now, it’s time to do a little exploring around the city, and try and link up with my fellow Bus Tour Crew.

Stay tune for more!

-- hama

Hello world!

I’m being serious.

I’ve just resurfaced after spending nearly two weeks in a “executive keynote demo bunker”, building out a cool demo rig for a big upcoming event (wink, wink).  Man, I had a beard and everything, and mostly sustained myself with Starbucks coffee, good humor, and the thousand degree temperatures that come with stuffing a bunch of demo hardware gear in a Building 31 office (READ: no fancy server room HVAC).

Luckily, we were able to squat in our GM’s office (who’s currently on leave), to construct a wicked 3 server, 2 client environment featuring the RTM code of every fan’s favorite, Exchange Server 2010. 

But, before we get to that, I think it’s worth bringing you up-to-date on my next pending adventure (and I did choose the word “adventure” on purpose).

Starting November 2nd, from they wonderful Dutch city of Amsterdam, I will be “Getting on the Bus”.

To be clear, I’m not heralding the fact I plan to use the public transportation system in Holland.

I still might, but that’s neither here nor there.

What I am doing, is joining the second week of the two week, 11-city European road show featuring Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010.

This is being driven (no pun intended) by our pals over in Microsoft Learning, as part of the whole “Born to Learn” program.

But, wait!

There’s more!

When I say I’m “getting on the bus”, I literally mean I’ll be living on a bus for 5 straight days.

That’s right.

Me, and a team of heavy hitters across Windows, Windows Server, the Certification Program, and (yes!) Exchange, will be doing events during the day, and like any good rock tour of the IT kind, we’ll be boarding the bus that evening to make it to the next city before dawn.

I think there’s a Grateful Dead song that comes to mind here.

“So, what kind of bus is this?” you ask. 

This is no mere mortal bus, or even an R.V.

Instead, it comes from the cats over in the U.K. called Jumbocruiser.

We get to spend our travel timing on a Premium Double Decker, model T300, bus, which sleeps up to 16, and offers such amenities as “especially spacious downstairs” featuring “deep and comfortable seats”, and our own personal bunk complete with curtain, video game system, and snappy sheets.

While the video I linked above gives one perspective, fear not. 

I’ve just received my new Flip Video camera, which I intend using to provide as close to daily vblogs of “life on the bus”.  I also just ordered a cellular aircard for some data link capacity for the times I’ll be starring out the window, watching the German country side go by, and checking e-mail.

Wow, eh?

As I will be terminating my bus journey in Berlin, I feel bit like the Olympic Torch relay for our grand launch at TechEd Europe 2009.

To that end, here’s my tour of scheduled appearance cities (in case you want swing by):

• Monday, November 2nd – Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Tuesday, November 3rd – Frankfurt, Germany
• Wednesday, November 4th – Munich, Germany
• Thursday, November 5th – Vienna, Austria
• Friday, November 6th – Prague, Czech Republic

More details on the actual events and locations of can be found by visiting http://thebustour.com/thebus/tour-dates.

You can even track our progress through the Live Bus Tracker (powered by Glympse).  As I write this post, the bus (a/k/a Career Express) is en route across France, traveling at 60 MPH:

The gang has even recorded a short video of me for their blog, to give you a sense on what the heck I’ll be doing throughout the 2nd week of the tour:

Wow!

What a crazy run it has been, as we’ve been ramping for a number of milestones for the big launch. 

For example, I’ve spent this week building out a real killer Exchange Server 2010 demo rig for some important, upcoming events.  In addition to that, I have been conducting briefings with top tier tech press reviewers, showing off the Exchange 2010 RTM experiences.

Before that, it was all about The New Efficiency, and helping deliver content, presentations, and yes, even a demo or two, as part of this virtual launch event.

What?

You haven’t been up to thenewefficiency.com yet?

If you need some motivation to visit a pretty cool “virtual launch experience” (that’s what the all the Web 2.0 cats call these things) featuring the line up of  Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010, well, check this out:

That’s right: it’s me!

Among the Exchange 2010 sessions I deliver on such things our integrated e-mail archiving, retention and discovery capabilities, I’m doing the Exchange demo in Chris Capossela’s keynote.

To check out my online performance, in my Microsoft “dress blues”, just go up to http://www.thenewefficiency.com and click on the “Watch the Keynotes” icon:

And, select the “Technologies for the New Efficiency" with Chris Capossela” option.  You can watch the whole thing (which I do recommend), or just fast forward to 35:10 to see Chris hand things over to me.

In the demo, I highlight:

• Outlook Web App
• Integrated IM and Presence
• Conversation View and the Ignore Conversation
• Voice Mail Preview
• Outlook 2010
• Personal Archive
• Transport Protection Rules, and
• Multi-Mailbox Search

It’s a good line up, and I hope you enjoy it.  I also hope you’ll explore the rest of the Exchange 2010 content (including my two other sessions).

One fun fact: the Microsoft Studios set used to recorded this demo, once served as set for the MSNBC talk show, the Ron Regan Show.  And, they used a bunch of gel in my hair…I swear, it could have stopped a bullet.

More to come on the fun…wait till I tell you about my bus tour of Europe the first week of November!

-- hama

Last Wednesday I started with a brief overview of the integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities we’re launching with Exchange Server 2010.

Good, right?

Well, a common question I get from customers, partners, analysts, our field and the like is:

“So, why are you adding an archive to Exchange?”

Great question…glad you asked! 

This is the purpose of today’s post: what’s our motivation.

The Background

For some time now, we’ve been hearing a bunch from customers about how increased regulatory and compliance pressures are driving the need for better preservation (a/k/a retention) and discovery (a/k/a search) of e-mail data. 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that e-mail is considered a valuable source corporate data, and is often sort after in legal, compliance, and personnel matters.  Even the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were amended in 2006 to up the ante regarding the “disclosure or discovery of electronically stored information” (READ: e-mail).  On top of the rule changes, a quick search with your favorite Internet search engine reveals that e-Discovery of e-mail is on the rise.  I think the Enterprise Strategy Group has a stunning (albeit a little dated) stat regarding this trend:

“A survey by Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 91% of organizations with more than 20,000 employees have experienced an electronic discovery involving e-mail in the past 12 months.”

And, that’s just the discovery side of things.

What about adhering to regulations around data retention?

We all have our “favorites” here, like the internal controls required with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or 3-6 year retention period that comes with SEC Rule 17a-4. 

One of the most interesting retention policies I’ve heard comes from a conversation I had with a European-based health care provider.  They stated that they need to retain patient records (which includes e-mails between doctors and those they treat) for a period of 6 months before the patient’s birth and 10 years after their death, or 125 years (which ever comes first).

Yikes, right?

Well, it’s pretty clear that every business, agency, and organization is held to fairly stringent e-mail preservation and discovery rules.  That said, when we took a look at the adoption of adequate e-mail archiving and discovery procedures and tools, we found that only ~20% of Exchange customers have taken these steps (based on both internal Microsoft research and findings from the leading industry analyst firms). 

To quote a U.S.-based customer I spoke with on Thursday, “why am I not surprised?”

So, that means 4 out of 5 are doing nothing, relying on backup tapes, or even prayer. For some, the latter is just a matter of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” before they can get the attention and funding necessary to affect a positive change.

As you would expect, we dug a little deeper to find out why this may be the case.  What we found was it really came down to two things: 1) Experience and 2) Costs.

The Experience at a Cost

Many e-mail archiving approaches introduce an environment that can be unfamiliar to your users. For example, we’ve heard that it’s not uncommon that your users experience a disruption of their normal Inbox management workflow when archiving product add-ons are, well, added to Outlook or OWA. Search is another common scenario that exemplifies this concern. Your users may have one experience when searching their live e-mail, and yet another, outside of their familiar e-mail clients when they need to search within their archive.

And, it’s worth mentioning that when e-mail is removed from Exchange (a method oft employed by archiving solutions), your users can no longer benefit from the full fidelity of either new or existing Exchange features, like the enhanced conversation view we’ve introduced in Exchange Server 2010 or the mailbox resiliency features (like Database Availability Groups and online mailbox moves).

When it comes to administrative tasks, there could be a range of challenges from difficultly in deploying those add-ons I just mentioned, to having separate tools for conducting multi-mailbox searches across archived and live e-mail for e-discovery, or even having to learn and implement yet another infrastructure that needs to be reliable and easy to access. 

Lastly, is cost. Licensing and deploying yet another critical piece of infrastructure risks both increased costs and administrative overhead.  This includes the costs around the end-user training required to teach new e-mail habits and practices (or the extra helpdesk calls when someone needs to find something that’s not in Outlook).

This may just be a summary of our findings, but certainly would appreciate hearing what other barriers you may have come across in evaluating such a solution (READ: how about some comments? <g>).

The Eco-System?

Let me stop here for one second and address a question that may be coming to mind:

“What about 3rd party solutions?”  

Well, it’s simple: Exchange has and shall continue to benefit from an eco-system of solutions that add great value to the platform (cue marketing fanfare).

No seriously, it’s true.

In fact, we’re already working with many of these very same e-mail archiving partners, helping to map out how they can utilize our extensibility features to add to the capabilities we’re shipping in Exchange 2010, all while delivering the user and IT Pro experiences our Exchange customers come to expect from us by keeping the e-mail in Exchange (more on that later!).

The Exchange 2010 Difference

No matter what your organization’s motivation is for adopting an e-mail archiving solution (e.g., rid yourself of PST files, mailbox management, e-Discovery or even regulatory compliance), I think you’ll find our approach of interest. As I said back in my last post, a key differentiator about what we’re doing here is the fact you get to preserve the user and the IT Pro experience while you’re preserving and enabling easy discovery of your e-mail data.  And, that is a big reason why we’ve added these features.  If we can help drive up adoption of proper e-mail retention and discovery, everyone wins. 

And, this may be something of a paradigm shift for many of you, i.e., keeping e-mail in Exchange to archive it.

To be clear, we’re not shipping a stand alone e-mail archiving product here, but instead are adding integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities right into our e-mail server (and a market leading one at that!).

This means not only do you get the benefits from these e-mail retention and discovery features, you also gain from all of the new mailbox resiliency (read: HA and DR) and storage platform advancements we continue to deliver in every release of Exchange.

There’s still a lot more to talk about in this space, and that will be kicked off in my next post about the Personal Archive bit.

Blog Reader Poll or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Add Comments to Ian’s Blog…

This week’s question: so, what’s your motivation for archiving your e-mail?

-- hama

I must admit, that after nearly a four month hiatus, I’m feeling a bit like my blog has just been reawaken, like Han Solo was released from being frozen in Carbonite: can’t really see that well, and I’m hoping that I don’t need to stare down a Sarlacc in the process.

Wow, that’s a lot Star Wars for one blog posting!

While I can offer up a long list of excuses, such as I been working with the team to ramp up for the upcoming launch of Exchange Server 2010 , or trying to get all of my PCs upgraded to the Windows 7 RTM bits, I won’t bore you with any of them, except to say: “I’m back!” (Seriously).

I’ll give you a moment to take that all in, and hopefully not switch channels.

Moving on…

Exchange Archiving (or is it, Archiving in Exchange)

Over the last several months, since we’ve publicly disclosed Exchange Server 2010, I’ve been spending a ton of time chatting with customers, our partners, and the Microsoft field about one of the big, new areas of this release: the integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities.

Even though this feature set is joined by a long list of Exchange 2010 innovations and product enhancements, Exchange archiving has certainly garnered a great deal of attention…not that I’m complaining, ‘cuz this is fantastic!

Having stepped into the role of (cue:fanfare) “Senior Technical Product Manager for the Exchange Archiving Workload” in April, following my year long stint as a product planner for the then code named Exchange “14”, I thought it appropriate to start blogging a bit more about what this archiving thing is all about.

Sound good?

I also felt there was an opportunity to drive some great Internetterwebs discussion around e-mail archiving, in general.  I’ve learned a ton about how you are thinking about e-mail archiving, and by bringing a fresh(er) perspective to it, I think there are some areas worth taking a closer look at.

To start with, how about just a clear description of what Exchange archiving is?

Here’s the “marketing speak” one-liner I put together to describe what we’re doing:

“Exchange Server 2010 introduces integrated e-mail archiving capabilities offering customers out-of-the-box tools to preserve and discover e-mail data, without changing the user or IT Pro experience”

What does that all mean? 

Simply put: as an e-mail server, we’ve added capabilities to Exchange aimed at helping you get a better handle on all of your e-mail data, by delivering a great, full fidelity experience, through utilizing the end-user (e.g., Outlook) and admin (e.g. Exchange Management Console) tools that are the most familiar to your folks and your IT dept.

What?

Yup!

Beneath these fancy words are a set of features that I think are best represented by this graphic:

So, what we’re talking about, first, is a personal archive that seamlessly surfaces in both Outlook and Outlook Web Access. This is a secondary mailbox that appears, like a set of folders or opened .PST file, allowing your users to use familiar tools and actions to manage both live and archived e-mail data. For the admins out there, the very same tools used to manage other aspects of Exchange, like EMC or PowerShell, can be used to configure and enable this personal archive.

Next, are a set of retention policies that enables the IT staff to define, deploy, and automate the expiry and archiving of e-mail data. These new policies are both granular and flexible (that’s right!), and can be set at either the folder or item level. A brand new policy in Exchange 2010 is a legal hold. When switched on for a user’s mailbox, Exchange retains any edits or deletions made by the user under hold. These messages are stored in the Recoverable Items Store (a/k/a the “dumpster”), in a folder not accessible to or changeable by the user.

Lastly, is a new and easy to use web-based multi-mailbox search.  Thanks to the new Role Based Access Control goodness we added to Exchange 2010, this capability can be delegated to specialist users -- like your compliance officer or a human resources manager -- to conduct e-Discovery tasks without having to generate additional overhead for you folks in the IT department.

In future postings, I’ll go into more details about these various features, as well as provide you some context around our motivation and what this could all mean for you!

Until then, I look forward to hearing from everyone and getting your thoughts around this space and what Exchange is delivering.

-- hama

What a long post title to basically share a link to a recent video I recorded with Microsoft U.K.’s very own Eileen Brown (leading IT Pro evangelist, and social media expert) about our recent unveiling of Exchange 2010:

This video was shot just minutes after spending nearly seven hours presenting and facilitating the Exchange sessions, with fellow Redmond Exchange team’er Ed Banti, at the Reading, U.K. edition of INTERACT 2009.

Eileen even has a blog about that: Interact 2009 and Exchange 2010

Well, enjoy the video. 

And, don’t forget to check out all the Exchange 2010 resources (and the beta download) available at microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

-- hama