The Osterman Research Blog

A way to process encrypted data

2009-06-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

IBM announced an interesting resolution to a problem created by encryption. The solution, which IBM dubbed "privacy homomorphism", allows deep inspection of encrypted content while maintaining the confidentiality of that content.

From a messaging perspective, this would be an important breakthrough, particularly in the context of archiving and security. For example, if encrypted messages are sent from desktop to desktop, archiving is a problem because the information in the message and any attachments cannot generally be indexed. While gateway-to-gateway encryption gets around this problem, there are some cases in which encryption should be maintained end-to-end. Similarly, deep inspection of encrypted content could take place for purposes of spam or malware scanning.

More information is available here.

Hybrid archiving

2009-06-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

Hybrid security is growing in popularity as companies large and small recognize the benefit of using cloud-based malware and spam management as a great way to protect their investment in on-premise systems and manage the bad stuff more effectively. But LiveOffice and Mimosa Systems just announced a hybrid archiving capability (still in beta) that uses both on-premise and cloud-based archiving in a coordinated way.

As noted by both companies, two of the use cases for hybrid archiving are a) the ability to migrate older content from an on-premise archive to the cloud, thereby helping organizations to more effectively and less expensively manage their on-premise archival storage; and b) moving blocks of data to a cloud-based archive for review, such as by external legal counsel during e-discovery or pre-litigation review.

I can also see the benefit of using a hybrid archiving approach for large organizations that maintain a number of satellite offices, where the headquarters location might want to have on-premise archiving, but use cloud-based archiving for their smaller offices that do not have dedicated IT staff. Other scenarios might include the ability to migrate more easily to on-premise archiving as a company grows, migrating to the cloud if there are cutbacks in an IT department, or simply taking advantage of the lowest possible costs for storage.

The King of Twitter

2009-06-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

The UK government has appointed Andrew Stott as Director of Digital Engagement, a role that will be focused on making better use of social media, Web 2.0 technologies and other online tools as a means of migrating various services online. More information is available here. The Director's Twitter handle is DirDigEng.

This is actually a pretty good idea given that it can allow government to communicate more effectively with those who pay its bills, and can potentially reduce the cost of managing information within government. Flattening the hierarchy that exists within government can have some clear advantages.

Sendio's partnering with TKCIS

2009-06-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Sendio offers an anti-spam solution that our research has found to be quite well-received by its customers. In April, the company partnered with TKC Integration Services, a tribally-owned Native American corporation that is focused on federal government contracting.

This type of partnering represents a smart move for Sendio and perhaps a model for other vendors to follow in the messaging space. TKC -- which for purposes of government contracts, is considered a small, disadvantaged business and an Alaskan Native Corporation -- can gain an entrance to federal government contracts that others in its space may not be able to realize. This may allow Sendio to participate in contracts that it otherwise might not have been to get were it not for the advantages that TKC enjoys.

The scourge of the 'Reply All' button

2009-06-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

I somehow was put onto a mailing list from a company I don't know and, as of this writing, I have been copied on at least 20 'please unsubscribe me' messages from people all over the country. While this doesn't happen too often, it got me to thinking of a feature I'd like to see in email clients. In keeping with good email practice of not hitting Reply All without a really good reason to do so, perhaps there could be a rule built in to email clients that would provide a pop-up whenever senders click Reply All. The popup would remind people of the danger of clicking Reply All, particularly to a large list of recipients. The popup could be customized by administrators and could be turned off only temporarily (maybe after every 10 Reply Alls the popup would reappear).

In the grand scheme of things, this would solve a relatively minor problem, but would be useful nonetheless.

New survey on social networking

2009-05-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

We launched a short survey on social networking this morning to see how commonly it's used for marketing purposes, where social networking fits in the hierarchy of communication tools and information sources, the utility of social networking for gathering insights, etc. We will be publishing our results shortly.

Microsoft TechEd

2009-05-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

Currently at TechEd where, not surprisingly given the slower economy, attendance is a bit down from past years. That said, while it's still morning and I've yet to talk to many exhibitors, one vendor with whom I spoke was very happy with the show floor traffic thus far. Despite the gloom that some feel from the variety of negative press reports about the economy in general, there are a number of bright spots here at the show and from those I've been talking to over the past few weeks.

New survey on social networking

2009-05-11T10:31:00.001-07:00

We're going to launch a new survey on social networking to determine where Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. fit into the communications and information hierarchy. We plan to have results available next week.

A theory about Twitter

2009-04-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

A well-publicized Nielsen study found that Twitter's retention is only 40% -- fully 60% of the people who sign up for Twitter don't return after the first month. Facebook, on the other hand, has a much higher retention rate.

There are a number of possible explanations for Twitter's relatively low retention rate -- unlike Facebook where you can play lots of games, etc., there's not much to do on Twitter except Tweet. However, I believe that something else may be at play here. On Facebook, you can add friends and there is a certain status for some people in having more friends than others -- if you have 800 friends and your peers have 150, maybe that means you're cooler, more popular or more of a Facebook veteran than they are.

On Twitter, you can also add friends by following people. However, there's another dimension -- the number of people following you. What that means is that everyone on Twitter has an implied Followers-to-Following (F:F) ratio, the ratio of people following you to the number of people you're following. People like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher have enormous F:F ratios -- 64,799:1 and 11,083:1, respectively, as of this writing. There is a certain status in having such a high ratio -- maybe it means that you're popular or somehow more interesting than others.

But what if you have a low F:F ratio and you're following more people than are following you? Do the people who find status in the number of friends they have on Facebook also feel some sort of embarrassment when they're following lots more people than are following them on Twitter?

I have no idea if this is the case, but it would be interesting to look into the internals of the Nielsen research to see if there is some correlation between the likelihood of staying active in Twitter and the F:F ratio. Are people with low F:F ratios less likely to stick with Twitter than those with high ratios?

Your thoughts?

Still think you don't need DLP?

2009-04-24T03:40:00.000-07:00

Infosecurity Europe conducted a survey this week of 600 commuters at railway stations in London. Here are the frightening results:

89% said they would disclose sensitive data from their employer in return for payment ranging from GBP1 million to as little as a meal.
88% of those surveyed considered the information to which they have access as valuable.
One-third of respondents indicated less loyalty to their employers compared to one year ago.

Even if we assume that respondents were exaggerating a bit, the results of this interesting survey reveal that employers are at serious risk of losing sensitive data. The result could be as simple as a bit of embarrassment, but could be as damaging as the loss of trade secrets or the squelching of a company acquisition.

Organizations of all sizes need to deploy data leak protection (DLP) systems to help prevent this type of data loss. While DLP systems cannot prevent all data breaches, and while they are less effective at preventing malicious behavior than they are at preventing inadvertent breaches, they are a good adjunct to corporate policies and other efforts designed to protect sensitive and confidential data from leaving the organization in unauthorized ways. DLP will continue to become more important over time as the venues for data leakage proliferate, including email, instant messaging clients, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, USB thumbdrives, mobile devices, etc. DLP clearly will never replace employee integrity as a preventive for malicious data breaches, but it's necessary nonetheless.

More information on the Infosecurity Europe study is available here.

How Green Are Your Servers?

2009-04-17T11:44:00.001-07:00

We have recently published Enterprise Messaging Server Market Trends, 2008-2011, a study that, among other things, forecasts the market for email servers in North America. One of the issues about which we wanted to ask the messaging-oriented decision makers and influencers who responded to the in-depth survey we conducted for this report was the impact that "green" computing would have on their messaging server purchases in 2009 and 2010.

The answer was "not much impact at all": 53% of organizations said that green computing would play little or no role in their purchase decisions; only 2% told us that it would be a critical part of the decision-making process.

The results of the survey notwithstanding, organizations can save quite a lot of money by reducing the power consumption of their servers, using virtualization, and employing other technologies that can cut the power bill. Servers consume about 1.2% of the total power output in the United States, for example, so cutting power use could save organizations, particularly large ones, quite a bit.

Voice as text in Exchange 2010

2009-04-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's announcement of Exchange 2010 provides an overview of some very interesting features in the new release, most of which were discussed in the sessions I attended at a Microsoft event on the Redmond campus earlier this week.

Among the most interesting from a usability standpoint is the Voice Mail Preview, a feature that will provide some or all of the content of voicemails converted to text and delivered to Outlook. This should prove to be a useful feature for most users, particularly those of us who prefer email to voicemail, but it raises some interesting implications about the discoverability of this content. For example, will an organization that uses this feature want to make the content of voicemail part of their e-discovery exercises as they do with email today? Are there good reasons for not doing so? Will this lower the bar on e-discovery by making judges more likely to approve the review of voicemails? What will this do to storage?

I think Voice Mail Preview is a great feature and one I'd like to have today, particularly when traveling, but it raises some issues that I'm not sure everyone has considered fully. What do you think?

The vulnerability of our communications

2009-04-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

The intentional sabotage of four fiber-optic cables in San Jose and San Carlos, California earlier this week clearly points out the vulnerability of our communications infrastructure. This act of sabotage underscores the need for disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities at all levels of the network, but certainly for our email systems and the other applications that run on top of it. There are a variety of on-premise and hosted services that can make email virtually immune from all but the most widespread acts of sabotage and terrorism. While many organizations have not built disaster recovery into their planning, particularly because of the current economic climate, they should.

There are a number of disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities you might want to consider. On-premise systems that will automatically failover to backup servers, particularly if there is some geographic separation between the primary and secondary systems, is a good choice. So are hosted services that will provide the same functionality, but without on-premise infrastructure. Using a hosted email service that has multiple, geographically separate data centers offers a robust level of continuity, as well.

Whatever lessons you take from this week's act of sabotage or terrorism - call it what you want - at the top of the list should be the critical need for continuity in your email and other critical systems.

How long are you in front of a display?

2009-03-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

An interesting report from the Video Consumer Mapping study found that US adults spend more than eight hours a day in front of any sort of display, whether it's a computer monitor, a screen on a mobile phone, a television, etc. (Of course, living near Seattle, that's about the only way we can get a tan for much of the year.)

Some interesting findings from the study:

- adults spend an average of 2h 22m each day at a computer screen (quite similar to what we found for email use each day in an Osterman Research survey)

- adults interact with their mobile device 20 minutes each; for those in the 18-24 group, that figure is 43 minutes per day.

- the average adult spends just over five hours each day in front of a television.

Click here for more information on this study.

The Experts Conference

2009-03-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a session at The Experts Conference (formerly The Directory Experts Conference), an annual conference that was originally started to support those who manage Active Directory. However, TEC has been expanded to include Microsoft's identity and access management technologies, and this year it has expanded to include a complete Exchange-oriented track, as well.

Lots of very good, technically-oriented content on managing Exchange and other Microsoft technologies, although I attended an interesting session on e-discovery issues that would be useful for legal counsel to attend. TEC is underwritten by Quest Software and has been assembled and managed very nicely. None of the sessions has a salesy feel in the slightest, but instead are run by consultants and Microsoft MVP-types. Plus, the event is being held in Henderson, NV, just a few minutes south of the Las Vegas Strip, which offers a very different feel from Las Vegas itself.

All in all, a very good conference that should be on the short list of meetings to attend for anyone who manages Microsoft technologies.

Azaleos and M3TG merge

2009-03-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

Announced today:

"Azaleos® Corporation, the managed Microsoft Exchange services company, and M3 Technology Group (M3TG) today announced they have merged their businesses to become the market's leading provider of remotely managed Microsoft Exchange and related services. The combined companies, which will operate under the Azaleos brand, now have the technical support resources as well as East and West coast network operations center necessary to support even the largest organizations..."

This announcement should help Azaleos to expand its unique and quite interesting business model that combines the cost savings of hosting with the ability to retain infrastructure on-premise. Many decision makers continue to resist the notion of hosting their email and related services, instead preferring to keep everything behind the firewall. The Azaleos model allows them to do just that, while realizing the benefits of using third-party specialists to keep things up and running. This is another form of a "hybrid" hosted model that a growing number of organizations are considering.

Interesting stats

2009-03-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

BITKOM conducted a poll of 1,002 computer users in Germany and found the following:

- 45% do not use a firewall
- 19% have not installed anti-virus software
- More than 25% refuse to shop online because of their fears about security
- Almost 20% will not purchase tickets or books online

While the survey was conducted only in Germany, the results are likely reflective of the situation in other nations. Many simply don't use AV software or services and so allow their computers to become bots for sending spam. Many don't practice other "safe computing" practices, and so allow all kinds of malware to wreak havoc on their systems. A column I wrote for Messaging Wire this week discusses the issue of online trust and Purewire's new source of reputation information, the newest of a growing number of sources that people can turn to for information on the trustworthiness of online sources.

Trust is a serious issue and obviously one that many individuals simply don't take seriously enough.

When the truth can get you in trouble

2009-02-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

An interesting decision was recently handed down in a legal case involving an email sent by Staples to 1,500 of its employees. The email discussed a Staples employee who had been fired for violating the company's travel and expense policy. While the content of the email was factual, the former employee sued for libel, claiming that Staples had sent the email with malicious intent.

A federal appeals court in Boston ruled that Staples was guilty of malice and ruled in favor of the plaintiff. Information on the case can be found here.

It used to be that truth was a defense against libel. This court decision now demonstrates that even the truth can get you into trouble.

Two of the key takeaways from this case as I see it: first, every employer should establish a policy about what employees should not say in email, given that truth can no longer protect someone from being judged guilty of libel. This should be part of a larger, detailed policy about email use. Second, organizations should implement content filtering capabilities for outbound email, instant messaging conversations, blog postings, wiki postings, etc. to monitor, in real time, if corporate policies are being followed.

My two cents on the Facebook controversy

2009-02-17T22:30:00.000-08:00

Facebook started a furor yesterday when it changed its terms of service, allowing the company to retain all content posted to the site, even for users who have deleted their accounts from the system. Previously, when a user left Facebook, all of the content he or she posted would no longer be used by Facebook. Under the new terms, any photos, emails or other content can be used by Facebook for any purpose it deems acceptable. That does not mean that Facebook will publish its users' content, but it can if it wants to do so.

How about this for an idea: Facebook should immediately revert back to its old user agreement through the end of March. Announce that it will implement its new terms of service effective April 1st and allow people to cancel their accounts before then under the old terms. Then, if people retain their accounts past March 31st, they will have done so knowing that their content can be used by Facebook according to the new and less restrictive terms.

Doing so would mean that Facebook would negate much of the negative publicity it generated and we would have more choice about how our content is used.

The Economy's Impact on IT Spending

2009-02-03T16:58:00.000-08:00

The soft economy is having some fairly significant impacts on various industries. We wanted to find out what impact the economy was having on IT spending, and so conducted a few surveys to gauge the effects on various types of IT spending. Here's a summary:

- 38% of organizations said they will definitely reduce budget for IT travel during 2009 compared to 2008, while another 23% said they will probably reduce travel budgets.

- 62% said their direct IT budgets will either be a bit or much lower in 2009 compared to 2008; if they had been asked this question six months earlier, only 33% would have responded this way.

- However, some IT budgets are increasing: 21% of respondents said their email archiving budget will increase in 2009, 18% said their budget for mobile devices and techologies will increase, and 17% said their content management budgets will increase.

To download your complimentary copy of this survey report, click here.

What should you pay for email?

2009-01-20T05:50:00.001-08:00

Sitting in on the Tuesday keynote at Lotusphere focused on LotusLive (formerly Bluehouse), Lotus' new online offering that includes email, Web conferencing, instant messaging and other services all delivered via a cloud-based model.

Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Messaging and Collaboration for Lotus, asked "what should email cost?" His contention is that above 10,000 users, on-premise Notes is less expensive than in-the-cloud services, but that for smaller organizations or for those that do not have optimized deployments, cloud-based services are less expensive.

Our research generally agrees, finding that for small companies the cost of running email is dramatically more expensive on-premise because of the minimal economies of scale that exist in smaller organizations. Even large organizations can realize cost benefits from in-the-cloud email services, but the savings are not as dramatic.

Lotus customer additions

2009-01-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the opening session at Lotusphere where Bob Piccione just announced that Lotus has added 12,236 new customers since the introduction of R8. Dan Aykroyd, coming out as Beldar the Conehead, did the opening following The Blue Man Group intro. Piccione just announced that attendance at Lotusphere is up 2% over last year -- nice to see in a down economy.

Using the Mac with Exchange

2009-01-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

The new version of Mac OS X - Snow Leopard - is slated for release sometime this year. The similarity of the new OS name to the current one implies that the changes will not be revolutionary. However, the changes from a messaging perspective will be important. Snow Leopard will support Exchange 2007 in the Mail program that comes on each Mac, as well as Address Book and iCal. Snow Leopard will use the Exchange Web Services protocol to provide full support for Exchange Server 2007 so that all Macs and iPhones will support the platform. Microsoft will also be updating Entourage in Office 2009 - the (sort of) Mac equivalent of Outlook so that communication with Exchange Server 2007 will be significantly more efficient.

Free Airport Wi-Fi

2009-01-13T21:46:00.000-08:00

Wi-Fi is quite valuable at airports, particularly for those of us with computers (such as the MacBook Air) that don't have built-in 3G modems. Free Wi-Fi at airports is even nicer. A directory of airports that offer free Wi-Fi is available here.

Capping broadband data rates

2009-01-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

Much has been made of the 250-gigabyte download cap imposed by a major cable television company during late 2008. Ostensibly, this was done to stop a handful of downloaders from hogging enormous amounts of bandwidth and slowing the network for other users. This explanation makes perfect sense.

I believe that the future of television is television-on-demand delivered over the Internet. The success of Hulu, Fancast, network television sites, etc. has created an environment in which viewers can view enormous amounts of content on demand. This means that individuals could, conceivably, replace their cable television service with broadband and save $50 or more per month in the process. If we assume a DVD-quality data rate of 4.8 megabits-per-second delivered over broadband, 250 gigabytes per month works out to 3h 57m of television viewing per day -- Americans watch an average of four hours of television per day.

Is it possible that caps on Internet traffic are focused primarily on preventing broadband from cannibalizing cable television service and only secondarily on maintaining good network performance? After all, US cable television subscribers are expected to fall slightly in 2009 to 66.2 million and cable companies will logically want to protect this very lucrative market from further erosion. While satellite represents a significant threat to cable, broadband could make the satellite threat look tame.

Just a thought...