Technology - Has it bettered your life?

I typically don't write too much about what is going on in my personal life. However, I wanted to touch on something that happened this past week. For those that know me well, they know my daughter is diabetic. She was diagnosed as Type I Diabetic shortly after her 5th birthday. What this means is that she is insulin dependent and has been receiving between 6-10 shots of insulin a day since. She's an amazing person and has handled this so well I'm nothing short of amazed and proud of her.

Through the amazing power of Disney (yes, I'm still talking about medical innovation here :), our daughter learned from her Grandma that Nick Jonas from the Jonas Brothers was recently diagnosed and on a newer diabetes pump called the OmniPod, by Insulet. It is a self contained pump that is WIRELESS and TUBELESS! Having experienced the Jonas Brothers live in concert along with Hanna Montana (her first concert, 20k screaming kids, her crazy dad took her) it was clear that these were some of the first people in her life that she was in awe of. Anything the Jonas Brothers thought was cool, certainly she thought it was cool too.

After much research by myself and my wife, On Friday July 25th 2008, technology changed our daughter's life. NO MORE SHOTS!!!! She programs in her insulin dose into a wireless remote and it sends the dosage requirements to the pod and a few seconds later, her dose is done. It has already changed her life and it's only been 3 days.

This really got me thinking, how has and how does technology make our lives better every day? Isn't that its purpose? We advance technology to make our lives and the lives around us better. So when you're contemplating new technology, make sure you ask yourself "is this going to make my life better?" If the answer is no, maybe you should be buying something that will. Or better yet, ask yourself if your current technology is making your life better. If it's not, maybe it's time to find some that will.

The Communication Archive

Ever since humans have been communicating, we have been keeping communication archives. In prehistoric times, it was cave paintings, to the Bible to the Quran, etc. Ever since we have been able to keep a record in some form of written mechanism, we have technically been archiving this data for not only the current generation, but future generations ability to look back on earlier times.

As we continue to evolve in terms of how we communicate and the technology that surrounds us, we 'Archive' in new ways. The electronic archive. Some people feel as though we've changed the world in terms of this new concept called "archiving." Technology is merely giving us a new place to store our communication archives. It's not on the side of a stone, but within a little black box on a shiny metal round disk.

From the beginning of "Modern History", we have been able to trace back historical records through written notes of historical events, "archives." Now imagine the world 500 years into the future. What are historians going to be able to search through to create history books? Will the "electornic age" become the second coming of the "dark ages" because nobody will be able to figure out why we didn't keep written records of events? Historians will find these little metal boxes with shiny round disks in them and have no idea where all of our paper is.

Maybe we can't find much written history from the original dark ages because they already had email archives and we just can't figure out how to read them or where they were stored? :)

When chosing a new archive solution, keep in mind how you will adapt your current archive and even the next version of your archive. When implementing your new archive, don't forget about your old data. Keeping your archived data in the most current format will allow for easier transitions and migrations in the future and keeping future historians with something they can read and understand in 500 years.

Don't let this become the second dark age in history, keep your archived data current.

Travel Rant

On a recent trip back from San Francisco, I had an incident that happened to me that makes me question the airline industry even more.

I was the 4th person to board the plane on the red-eye back to Minneapolis. Two of the women in front of me in line made it through just fine. The 3rd, was called out of line as the system came up "red" and that she needed a paper ticket. Even though she clearly had a printout of her boarding pass already. As i get into my seat I can hear the two women behind me (first two on the plane) chatting. Finally as one sits down, the other asks "I'm in 6a, where are you?" - "Well, I'm in 6a." OH NO, they double booked us!

One of these women then turns to the lead attendant and tells him "we're both in 6a". He proceeds to tell her, "well, you will need to go back up to the gate agent, as there are only 4 flight attendants on the plane and that is the FAA minimum once passengers are on board. We're not allowed to leave the plane."

With this information, they both decide to sit down and wait, for what I don't know. Another flight attendant walks by "Ma'am, we're both in 6a." "I'm sorry ladies, you'll need to check with the gate agent as there are only 4............." With this SAME information, they both again decide to sit down and wait. In the meantime, 6B shows up. "I"m in 6B." "Well, we're both in 6a." and the don't move. So 6B is stuck standing while they wait.

Now the co-pilot comes walking by, "Excuse me sir, we're both in 6a." Now, don't you think this gentleman has better things to do with his time then resolve a seat issue since he's about to fly a couple hundred people across the country? "I have to go get the passenger list anyway right now, I'll stop back down when I have it so we can figure out what's going on." "Oh, thank you sir."

In the meantime, the lead attendant gets on the overhead and says the usual "Welcome to flight xxx service from San Francisco to the Minneapolis, St. Paul airport. Full flight, put your bags in right, blah blah blah.... and again, this is flight xxx service from San Francisco to Minneapolis, enjoy your flight."

Finally as the co-pilot boards the plane, "OK, which one of you is Mary?" "OK, great, you're in 6a. Can I see your boarding pass ma'am?" "Sure, it's right here!" "Well Jane, you're on the wrong plane, you're going to Detroit and this flight is going to Minneapolis." "OH MY GOSH, I can't believe I did that, is that plane still here? Where is it boarding from? Oh, I'm sorry!!!"

So the issues that bother me about this entire scenario are as follows:

- 3 members of the flight crew were approached by these women and not one of them looked at both of their boarding passes to verify that they were in the right seat or ON THE RIGHT PLANE!

- On this flight, only Platinum members were getting upgraded. So here are two women that fly in excess of 75,000 miles per year on one airline, and yet with all of their travels, she doesn't know enough to verify she's at the right gate or getting on the right plane?

- When the flight attentdant comes on and painfully announces that the plane is going to Minneapolis more than twice, does it not register that you're not going to Minneapolis?

- The biggest issue of all is how in the world did they let her get on the plane in the first place? 2 of the first 4 people on the plane had the same seat assignment and they let them both on?

- What's the point of having the strict security if you can just present your boarding pass to get on any flight from the same airline?

- Shouldn't these boarding system verify the flight is actually the one they are boarding?

Archive Retention Policies - Use Them

So one of my biggest pet peeves in the archiving space is retention policies. This is probably in the top 10 requirements of any major firm looking to deploy an archive today. They require the ability to set a single or multiple retention policies for their data. So my question to virtually any customer that I've ever spoken to is this. WHY ARE YOU NOT DELETING DATA???

I've spoken at a few different conferences over the past few years and one of the items I like to get feedback on is in regard to retention policy adherence. The first question that I'll ask is "how many of you have an email archive deployed and have retention policies set on your data". Being that these conferences are about archiving, virtually everyone raises their hands. Now brings the second and guilt-ridden question, "how many of you have data that is OLDER than the retention policy?" The frustration starts to brew when all of the hands stay up from the first question. Why insist on retention policies if you don't use them?

The last time I presented these questions was before a group of 75 CIO's. These people know they have data that is currently not being properly managed. That is what the application and archive storage is for. Retention policy adherence is something that needs to be adhered to more. If there is a policy, follow it. If you decide you're not sure how long you're going to need your data, pick a timeframe of X and ALSO have your policy state that it will be up for review on that date. If you need to extend the date out again, you now have that ability to do so and the data won't become lost in a graveyard waiting for someone to dig it up.

When I was at a client site a few years back, one of their senior directors came up to me with two backup tapes in his hand. He looked at me and said, "can you recover this by tomorrow?" I honestly had never seen that kind of tape in my life. I looked at him and actually laughed. My first response back was, "WHY do you still have this tape, is there anything on it?" All he knew was that there was a post-it with the label "1997 - Email Data". This company had a 3 year retention policy at the time. So clearly I assumed the tape was headed to be destroyed since it was 2004. Much to my disbelief, it was headed back to the storage area in case they needed it. This is a classic example of what not to do.

From our experiences working with customers across all verticals and across the globe, the one thing that courts are looking for is adherence to whatever policy you have. If you have data that is 10 years old, but for some reason destroyed data exactly at 7 years, the court assumes you are hiding something. If your policy is to only keep data 7 years, then get rid of the 10 year old data.

Archive Retention Policies are there for many great reasons. Abide by them and use them. Be consistent.

Transformation of Email Archiving

I started my technology career around the time Microsoft Mail was being introduced and messages were being sent to other employees just to see "did you really get that"? After this amazing addition of technology happened, the company I worked for added a 'dial-up gateway' where messages were sent over this magical thing called the Internet, it queued messages up on the server and dialed up and processed these messages, checked to see if any were destined for its users and then hung up, only to do the task again at a blazing speed of 14.4 kbps in another 3o minutes.

Email archiving in its rawest form has been around as long as the email environmnets have existed. Users have saved emails into some form of a personal archive, corporations have saved email on tape, made duplicate copies, or some other form of application to secure and store email longer than it was perhaps "intended" to be around. Regardless, it is.

Some of the top leading email archive applications today, have existed for over 10 years. Email archiving is not a new fad that is simply going to go away. It has become a major requirement for messaging infrastructures and an expectation to be deployed in the top Fortune 5000+ companies whether they are a financial industry regulated company or not. The latest analyst reports indicate that there are over 25,000 deployments of enterprise email archives in the world and is still one of the fastest growing market segments for enterprise software and storage.

So if email archiving is nothing "new" and is deployed in the top accounts across the globe, how can it be transforming. The transformation comes from the constant change in the market; archiving vendors get acquired: OTG to Legato to EMC, KVS to Veritas to Symantec, Educom to Zantaz to Atonomy, Persist (spun off from Zantaz) to HP, and more. These are some of the top deployed archiving applications in the world and they are changing ownership, adding features and improving their products. So if the vendors are constantly making changes, how could it be assumed that customers would not?

End users are constantly changing their minds about what they want and need. Maybe it's because a really good sales person convinced them they need their product, or they are sick of supporting an end user that always complains about some feature not working or that simply does not exist within their current product. So what are these customers doing? They are making changes. They are changing their archiving applications.

These changes that we are seeing in the market is nothing new for technology. As products and solutions improve, customers want their environment to improve as well. Customers make changes for all reasons good and bad; cost, features, functions, storage management, political, 'cause there is a cool button' and more.

The email archiving market is transforming. It's transforming from a rich green field of opportunities that all you had to do was throw a few lawn darts and wherever they landed was your next million dollar archiving sale. To today where the opportunities exist, but the field is already full of paying customers on competitive platforms. Tomorrow's customers were the competitor's customer 1,3,5 years ago. Opportunity exists in these 25,000+ accounts for vendors to sell them their solution. Customers have already determined that they need an archiving product. Vendors just need to convince the customers that their product is best for them now and that migrating the data will magically happen.

End users need to ask themselves if their product is the best for them. If not, now is the time to determine which product is. We've proven that these archives are not going away anytime soon. The archive market is transforming. Is your vendor helping you get to where you want to be?