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The View from the MER 2009 Conference in Chicago

On May 18-20 I attended the Managing Electronic Records (MER) Conference in Chicago (www.cohasset.com). This conference is a yearly ritual where Records Management (RM) professionals (and old friends) meet and try to make sense of the RM industry and where it is going.

There was something different this year… something very interesting. There was a sense that RM as a discipline is moving slowly but surely under the umbrella of “Information Governance” (IG), an emerging space that includes Electronic Discovery, Data Privacy, Audit Trail Management, Storage ILM, Digital Rights Lifecycle, etc.

The RM “mission” seems to be changing in at least two fundamental ways:

1) Organizations want to manage all facets of records lifecycle and not simply their retention and disposition aspects:

·         Record metadata may have different lifecycle from records themselves (a requirement in DoD 5015.2 and MoReq2)

·         PKI keys that control the access to records outside the organization boundaries must have lifecycle and that lifecycle must be related to the lifecycle of the record itself

·         Lifecycle rules in the Storage ILM layer can no longer be disconnected for the lifecycle of the record as defined in the Records Retention Schedule

·         Most Privacy Laws mandate maximum retention rules (can be event based – you must destroy this record when this event occurs), and/or the anonymization of records at some point in their lifecycle.

More and more, the RM profession is being challenged in its claim that its ownership of the management of records lifecycle. In the “Information Governance” game, RM is an important team player (key I might add), but not the only one.

2) The same corporate policies must apply to all forms and formats of records and not simply to the records that are discreet artifacts (electronic documents and physical documents) – see examples below:

·         Archived high-volume reports (customer statements, phone bills, etc.)

·         Content in database applications (CAD data, GIS data, financial records, etc.)

·         Content in data warehouses

Bottom-line: It is very hard to justify an enterprise RM solution if all it does is to handle a subset of the records and only one aspect of their lifecycle.

   

Two sessions at the MER Conference highlighted the importance of the points above:

The first was a presentation by Dr. Ken Thibodeau, the Director of the ERA Project at the US National Archives (www.archives.gov/era).

Dr. Thibodeau spoke directly about the “(i) open-ended proliferation of new forms of creating, capturing, and combining information, (ii) the more diverse ways of applying technology in the conduct of business, and (iii) the expanding capacity to re-use and re-purpose data”. He also stated that “Records Managers must (i) deal comprehensively with the permeation of digital information, (ii) acknowledge that established RM knowledge and methods have limited applicability in cyberspace, and (iii) recognize the opportunities that digital technology brings to the table”. He went on to describe how the RMS (Records Management Services) component specifications will re-shape the future of RM (www.archives.gov/era/rms).

The second presentation was by Julie Gable, President of Gable Consulting (www.gableconsulting.com) and a known speaker in the RM space.

Ms. Gable spoke about the management of metadata as being “the new frontier of RM”. She cited legal cases and standards (Sedona, ISO 23081-1, MoReq2) that highlight the importance of metadata in the management of the lifecycle of records.

She went on to describe the enterprise RM model as a federated solution that has at its heart a “Central Catalog”, a normalized master repository of all record metadata within the enterprise. She concluded her presentation by describing RSD GLASS (our own Information Governance solution framework) as a prime example of this new wave of solutions.

I believe that the RM industry has reached a point where it must revisit many of its assumptions… and evolve the “solution” to accommodate the evolving needs of the “Information Governance” mission.

“Information Governance” is a team sport (a lot more than RM ever was)… and the positions on the “team” must be earned! Professionals from IT, Data Privacy and Storage ILM are already positioning themselves to be active players in this game. The RM profession must rise to that challenge and go beyond the internal debates about the minutia of classifications and record series and the reasons why it (the RM profession) does always not get enough corporate recognition (and budgets).

A final anecdotal note: A very senior person in the industry who attended the sessions of Dr. Thibodeau’s and Ms. Gable commented to me that the RSD GLASS solution framework was well aligned with the US Federal Government RMS specifications. I told him that this was not a coincidence but rather an alignment by design… RSD GLASS is designed to address the ‘Information Governance” challenge from all its facets.

Mainframe revival continues: report from System z Technical Conference

I registered early this morning at IBM System z Technical conference 2009 in Brussels. As I already attended last year, I was very keen to discover how IBM progressed in its strategy for system z.

After general usage recommendations for the week, I get very enthusiastic at half past 9, when Mark Anzani - IBM System z platform Vice President - talked about progress of system z in 2008: 54 new system z customers in the world, of which 22 bought it for z/Linux -- meaning 1300 system z customers using z/Linux.

In 2008, 537 schools in the world are training 50000 students to system z technologies compared to 24 schools in 2003. The IBM strategy for system z started in 2003  and it is now clear that IBM has dthis plan strongly, unerringly, (with no doubts nor hesitations) in order to reinforce and rejuvenate mainframe market thanks to the "mainframe consolidation" concept. IBM will not leave the mainframe dying off; it's now sure. Strengthened by this idea while building my training agenda, I decided to focus on z/VM and z/Linux conferences and labs for this first day. 

The first conference I attended was on z/VM basics. I discovered how z/VM which is a concept launched with Mainframe in 1960's  would be now able to answer to the "dynamic strategy" for System z envisioned by IBM.  z/VM is the base technology to consolidate on system z, "dynamic" technologies under Linux.

At 1.30 after a quick lunch, I observed in the common hall a few changes from last year: some attendees coming from Lebanon or Saudi Arabia. A few IBMers from India. On the other hand, as last year, Jean-Michel Rodriguez from IBM Montpellier is here to present again the "Green data center" which became a reality with first production workload.

Tomorrow I will try to retrieve more informations and photos on this subject as well as the link to the demonstration in "Second life."

According to Mark Anzani this morning we are faced with physical limits with CPUs; that means that chip performance will not increase as it has for the past 20 years. Mark said we must now search for performance and then cost savings everywhere in software with better workload management, resource sharing,  as well as better cooling for energy savings. I suppose that many RSD system Z customers would be interested in knowing how with a particular disposition of hardware in the room you can save money.

To be continue after day 2...

University of Miami Achieves 532% ROI with RSD

We collaborated with Thoughtware Worldwide to study objectively the breadth and depth of productivity improvement our products bring to our customers.  Their report, available in compressed form here, and in its full length here, details how the results were achieved.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"What began as an initiative to migrate from microfiche to a digital archiving solution has become the foundation for widespread process improvements and millions of dollars in cost savings annually at over 120 departments at the University of Miami," said Jim Balter, Senior Business Systems Analyst. "For over ten years, RSD has helped us reduce operating costs for antiquated systems, repurpose physical office space for more strategic university uses, reduce paper consumption by 90%, and permanently improve productivity by eliminating time lost associated with physical archive document retrieval."

Measuring RSD Success: Upcoming ROI Study and Press Release

Thoughtware Worldwide LLC recently published a return on investment study entitled "The University of Miami generates business value through information governance with RSD -- realizes a 532% ROI."

The study details the millions of dollars in annual expense savings and permanent process improvements achieved by the University of Miami through their use of RSD solutions for document management and information governance.

Specific drivers of the 532% ROI include:

• Elimination of legacy archiving system: $250,000 per year

• 90% reduction in paper consumption: $925,000 per year

• Reduction in off-site storage costs: $1,000,000 per year

We'll post the study and a press release on the web site shortly!

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_macdonald/

PRODUCE THE NOTE: How a request for a retained record delayed mortgate foreclosure proceedings

ABC News had a fascinating story today which highlights:

1. the unfortunate state of our economy, and
2. the failure of critical records management capabilities within organizations that should know better.

But I would suggest it also points to how better information governance practices can play a key role in preventing future crises of the kind which have caused today's global crisis.

From that article:

"A University of Iowa study last year suggested that companies servicing mortgages are often negligent when it comes to producing the documentation to support foreclosure. In the study of more than 1,700 bankruptcy cases stemming from home foreclosures, the original note was missing more than 40 percent of the time, and other pieces of required documentation also were routinely left out."

This situation is obviously mission critical to the companies holding these mortgages -- but imagine just for a moment that five years ago the firms had implemented truly robust information governance policies?

Imagine that finance firms had proper visibility into these business-critical records.  In those records, trends would have surfaced regarding difficulties with a growing class of over-leveraged borrowers.  The properly-governed financial institution would have been able to take a preventative action on that large group of borrowers -- staving off their customers' financial tragedies (foreclosure, bankruptcy), and preventing their own decline which for some brought on effective government takeover.

Bold claim?  Perhaps.  But it makes all kinds of sense.  Let's raise visibility to the need for robust and reliable information governance policies and practices.

Any lingering doubt information governance is a strategic global issue?

Colleague Bassam Zarkout shared this story from the New York Times with me over the recent holidays: Bush Data Threatens to Overload Archives.  While stories about an unpopular president during his waning days in office can go overlooked, this one raises some important issues regarding information governance that extend beyond the White House, government in general -- to the enterprise.

I did a little reading and came across this one from the very beginning of 2008: White House Has No Comprehensive E-Mail Archive.

While they provide tidy little bookends to the calendar year, the more interesting point they raise is the one we have been focusing on at RSD: that vast expansion in content requiring treatment as "records" will converge with a rising tide of government regulation to create a strategic, global information governance challenge.

The referenced articles focus on two interesting areas: email, the age-old scourge of enterprise records managers, on the one hand, and the almost incalculable number and types of new content that will be deemed records, and therefore will need to be retained, i.e. archived, and properly disposed of over time, on the other.

Because of the events surrounding 9/11, it became necessary to capture and analyze a vastly broader and more voluminous range of data -- and to make that data part of the administration's "record," which must be retained on our National Archives.  No one could argue the need.

But think about this within the enterprise context -- and it is not hard to imagine 50-fold increases in the content we need to archive as well.

It is estimated in the "Bush Data" article above that Bush will leave 50-times the amount of "records" that Clinton left when he wrapped up his presidency

Instant messages; blog posts written as an employee; Facebook contributions; Skype calls; Twitter microblog posts; video (telepresence or YouTube)...

The moral of the story: get started NOW thinking about how you will manage the creation, retention, and final distribution of enterprise content.  You may already be behind!

Tim DEMPSEY, RSD Marketing, tde@rsd.com

Email Archiving and Records Management: An out of this world perspective

On January 24th, 2008, Jonathan Pettus, NASA’s CIO made an internal announcement (by email I suppose) to all managers titled “NASA Records Management and Email”. In this announcement, Pettus reminded all managers that emails can be records and these email records must be preserved in compliance with the US Federal Records Act.

Lest the readers think I have an inside connection at NASA, I do not. This announcement is available publicly on the web at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=26786.

But I digress.

Pettus specifically said “…We are responsible for effectively and efficiently managing all our federal records, regardless of format or media (including paper, microform, electronic, and audiovisual), throughout their life cycle. E-mail messages that document the accomplishment of agency business are federal records that must be preserved. A recent NASA Inspector General audit has underscored the importance of improving agency-wide e-mail records management...”. He also said that NASA was implementing internal systems to do that, but in the mean time, they have taken steps to retain all emails of select senior managers.

It is fitting that NASA should be one of the leading agencies when it comes to email records. Almost by definition, they are supposed to lead in everything. Nevertheless, what NASA is doing is newsworthy. In my last blog I made the point that organizations are increasingly looking at managing their emails as business documents and corporate records. This article simply proves the point. The emerging ideal “email archiving” solution is a solution that provides all the compliance and mailbox archiving features that we have seen so far in the marketplace. But in addition, (i) it must be able to archive all forms and formats of content including emails in order to avoid having to build a separate archive infrastructure for emails, and (ii) it must have a proven track record to scale to the levels required by the organization.

We are going to continue seeing further integration of email archiving offerings within content archiving offerings.

It makes sense.

Bassam ZARKOUT
Technical Advisory Committee Member

Email Archiving and Managing Emails as Business Documents

I subscribe to a large number of RSS feeds and eNewsletters many of which talk about email archiving. Over the years I have seen countless whitepapers, articles, and blog entries about this subject, about how email is the electronic version of the corporate letterhead, about the fact that the information and knowledge contained within our emails are the front lines of our information assets and our early warning system for troubles.

No wonder why we have seen in the last 10 years a new space pop up, the email archiving space. How did we get here and where is this thing going?

A brief history…

Most organisations agree with the notion that their email systems and infrastructure have a mission critical status. The incredible usefulness and effectiveness of email have led to its universal adoption as THE primary business communication tool.

In the late 90’s, the use of emails had already reached explosive levels and organisations’ email servers were starting to experience bloating-related reliability and availability problems, causing great anxiety within IT.

In order to alleviate this problem, IT began to impose restrictive quota limits on the size of user mailboxes. This measure proved to be temporary because it forced users to move emails out of the servers and park them into local PST files – this led to the scattering of this critical asset content and made it so much hard to discover and reuse.

The first generation of email archiving solutions tried to address this particular problem. They focused on moving excess emails from user mailboxes to centrally controlled archives, leaving behind links (emails stubs) that allow users to access the archived emails from within the email clients.

By the beginning of this decade, a wave of second generation email archiving products emerged. These products addressed the emerging need to capture emails in real time to satisfy an increasingly strict regulatory compliance landscape (example SEC 17a-4). These email archiving products captured emails directly from the “Journal” where copies of emails are sent before users receive them into their mailboxes.

Around that same period, email systems (and backups) were starting to become targets for opposing legal teams in investigations and litigation. The well-publicized Zubulake versus UBS Warburg legal case led to the 2006 amendments of the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedures which tightened the discovery process. The email archiving products were at that point enhanced to facilitate the discovery search in support of this requirement.

Managing Email as Business Documents

Up to this point, email archiving products were focused on satisfying the IT, Compliance and Legal stakeholders. But they were not addressing the fact that email is fundamentally an electronic version of the venerable company letterhead (paper).

In other words, the business wants emails to be managed as a business document (and possibly as a corporate record). A few years ago, the Global Records Manager of a large US Federal Government Agency stated that that 90% of their new records are emails! And that these “records” must be managed along the same principles and policies as other records. Put it differently, more and more organisations view emails and documents as technologically different but from a business point of view they must be treated the same way.

RSD’s Email Archiving Offering

This is how RSD continues to evolve its email archiving offering, using a single infrastructure to manage all archived content, be it mainframe generated AFP reports, documents created by end users of scanned in data capture centres, and emails captured from email servers.

In particular, this is a key advantage to our existing clients who have already invested in building scalable and reliable archives and simply want to add email archiving to that same archive rather than have to build a totally separate infrastructure.

I believe that the age of email archiving solutions is starting to give way to the age of archiving solutions that do emails as well as other content forms and formats within a single infrastructure.

Bassam ZARKOUT
Technical Advisory Committee Member

Update from the ARMA 2008 Conference

In comparison to last year, the ARMA Conference this year was full of energy (www.arma.org/conference/2008/index.cfm). I suppose Las Vegas being the venue had something to do with it – not that there was anything wrong with last year’s venue (Baltimore). It is that there aren’t many cities on the planet that can compete with the energy and allure of Las Vegas ...

Having said that, I think there was more to the heightened energy level in this year’s conference than the venue location… There was something else, a sense of anticipation that Records Management is finally ready for prime time, a sense that the current financial crisis is bound to lead to a wave of new regulatory controls which in turn will result in a sharp increase in demand for Records Management solutions. The argument goes as follows: if Enron gave us the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, then the “events” of October 2008 are bound to give us a lot more regulations and laws, which are surely going to incorporate new and stricter requirements for the capture, archival, retention, access controls, discovery, audits and disposition of content and records.

At the conference I participated in several discussions (some quite lively over dinner) with some of the leaders of the Records Management industry, discussions about whether Information Governance should become the new mantra of Records Management. A couple of vendors at this year’s conference were focused on this message, including RSD. The expectation is that there will be many more at ARMA 2009 in Orlando. It makes sense.

So what is this Information Governance thing?

Essentially, it is a solution framework intended to address an emerging challenge of extraordinary proportion:

1. The explosive growth in the creation and collection of content and records

2. The increasing demand for the compliance of this content with regulations, laws and internal policies

Information Governance enables organizations to apply corporate controls on content during the conduct of business. It includes solutions like Records Management, Electronic Discovery, Privacy Protection, Log Management, and many others.

RSD’s entry into the Information Governance space and its première participation in the ARMA conference could not have been more timely. Here is an ECM vendor with a 34 year history in the area of high-volume electronic record archiving and a plethora of corporate customers who have been using this technology for decades. Yet this company is largely unknown to the Records Management community and its decision makers. So one would think that RSD’s introduction of the RSD GLASS © Information Governance solution framework at that conference would go unnoticed. Not so.

At the show, RSD presented RSD GLASS ©. This is a modular and SOA-based Information Governance solution framework designed to provide governance controls over corporate records and weave them directly within the fabric of the infrastructure. The solution takes the concept of federated Records Management to the next (and ultimate) level: a complete separation between the record repositories (the tools) and the records retention policies and processes (the rules). Today, the majority of current Records Management solutions that support federated configurations are products that have been designed before the federated “era” but were later adapted to support federated functionality. These product adaptations are of course a step in the right direction, but customers interested in implementing Information Governance solutions at the enterprise level are starting to ask for solutions that are much more modular in design and more service orientated. It makes sense. RSD GLASS is precisely designed to meet this emerging requirement.

We are living in exciting times.

Bassam ZARKOUT
Technical Advisory Committee Member

Beginning the Information Governance Conversation

Today, RSD launches our corporate blog - a new platform for our technical and business leaders to share their opinions and offer their comments on trends and major events in our markets.

At RSD, we believe the information governance challenge facing the enterprise today is of strategic significance. Those who understand, plan, and execute to address this challenge will have competitive advantage in extremely tough economic conditions.

On this web log, my team and I will share our views about the business and technology issues around information governance - a very far reaching topic. Our goal is not only to share our opinions, but also to encourage a conversation with our customers, future customers, and even our competitors. It is my belief that an open and interactive conversation like this improves our company's ability to meet rapidly changing customer needs.

We invite you to join the conversation and I personally look forward to this new collaboration.
Pierre VAN BENEDEN, CEO, RSD