Researching archive products for SharePoint recently I turned to AvePoint because of my familiarity with their backup products. They have a products called AvePoint Extender Archive for SharePoint Technologies (MOSS 2007 and WSS v3.0) - The technical overview can be found here.

Some of my clients use AvePoint products for backup and restore and management. Overall they like the products but I’ve heard some complaints about user interface and licensing. Not sure if they have the same problems these days. Speaking with Quest a few months ago they were releasing their SharePoint backup tool to compete with AvePoint and CommVault.

Sitting in a bar at the Pallazzo in Las Vegas having a beer, I received an email from JC (www.desfor.com) regarding a team that walked into the wreck. Late last year I wrote a blog "What ever happended to Austins DC3 CF-ILQ" about a plane wreck my grandfather survived. They had taken a series of great pictures which I’ve attached. Since 1964 this bird has sat there. First hanging in the trees, then falling to the ground, surviving a major forest fire that occurred 20 years ago. Seems to be in okay shape given the circumstances.

CMS Watch has a great article written by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst. The article talks about a failed EDRM project, the following is a snippet from the article:

It should have been a career-enhancing project to work on, but it wasn't. In fact it was an abject failure. End users made it very clear that they hated the new system and flatly refused to use it. IT never managed to properly integrate it with Outlook, despite this being a key requirement and spending deeply on consultants and developers. I'm not quite sure how you measure failure, but these are the milestones that Director X points to: the CIO was fired, as was the first PM, while the second PM (literally) died on the job, I kid you not.

This reminds me of a client I worked with a year and a half a ago. The manager that ran the area responsible for EDRM had a weak strategy based on MS propaganda. During a white boarding session with her team, they began to realize that her strategy was flawed (Common sense usually prevails). Later, as the organization began implementing her plan, they ran into several problems common to EDRM and SharePoint projects (exactly what I warned them about - hate to say I told you so...).

Another great snippet:

A success you might think? Far from it, a good analogy would be "out of the frying pan and into the fire." For not only is the firm paying a lot of money for Documentum licenses and support, but SharePoint is not cheap either. Add to this the even bigger worry that SharePoint sprawl is already building up fast. Some records management services have been activated, but compliance, disposition, and archiving functionality are absent from the equation.

SharePoint has its place, it’s like a Swiss Army knife of sorts. Though the knives do everything, they don't do one thing particularly well. For example, Swiss Army knives come with spoons, would you eat your soup or cereal with it?

Organizations MUST think lifecycle, the pursuit of the magic bullet solution will only lead to frustration, failed projects and or marginal success. Do your research and DO NOT focus on products only. Instead think lifecycle and focus on governance, business data policy, organization change management, operational impacts, user adoption and metrics – tools will fall into place.

Recent discussions with clients and colleagues confirmed my belief that lack of a formal governance program is the root of pain for many organizations. Feeling disempowered and with failed attempts at projects, IT is frustrated by their lack of progress and growing concerns around information grow, risks and value. The business end of the organization is frustrated due to lack of information visibility, quality and availability. There is clearly a disconnect that only senior level management, process, policy, tools and a pinch of cultural change must address.

A colleagues recently emailed a few studies my way one of them entitled “Key Issues for Establishing Information Governance Policies, Processes and Organization, 2008” ID Number: G00155554. This is well worth a read.

Why read this?

• Learn about the hidden OPEX and CAPEX costs surrounding Information
• Better understand the risks and liabilities of not deleting data
• Gain insight regarding the business pain of info-glut

The analysis section starts with the following statement:

Information governance requires a cross-disciplinary business and IT strategy as well as
dedicated projects that better relate people, policies, processes and technology to the information needs of business leadership. If not stored, protected, harnessed and metered effectively, information is wasted, weakens in value, or can pose many risks. Information governance has become a business imperative, and company leaders' ability to apply equal rigor to managing all components of information across the business information supply chain will affect business performance, partners and prospects.

The report also provides a framework for building a governance program and reference other reports to provide the reader with more in depth information. If you partner this study with the publication “IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results” you’ll have a solid framework for building your Governance program.

How many emails do you receive daily? 20? 200? More? One of my colleagues averages 250 per day – yes, email abuse! In large global organizations, Email (to some extent SharePoint and OCS) is the main communication tool.

If your like me, you scan emails quickly, classify them, read the emails that look important. This works most the time but there are some cases where I miss important email due to scanning too fast.

During a training event in Stuttgart, a UK colleague introduced me to a tool for Outlook called Xobni. There tagline is “Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that helps you organize your flooded inbox”.

Want more information? Watch the video

Speaking with several organizations over the past few months there is a common theme I’m hearing. Information Management (IM) and Governance is a tough program to implement and IT departments often oversimplify it because the authority required to execute an IM program resides outside of IT. Instead it resides within the business units and ultimately a team consisting of executives, records managements, legal council and business units. When you consider the amount of work it takes to get multiple entities such as these aligned, no wonder the easy route has been taken for years – buy more storage, ignore the records manager and turn a blind eye to compliance.

If you ask most organizations, they will tell you that IM is a becoming more of a priority for several reasons such as:

• Data storage is growing at an un manageable rate
• Compliance is becoming more of an issue due to audits
• Several IM projects projects are underway (Archive, RM, Data policy….)
• Imaging and printing costs are out of control
• Microfiche and paper records are costly to access and maintain
• Surfacing information to support analytics and reporting
• Simplifying document centric business processes

Through in a recession, data center consolidation, downsizing and outsourcing as well to spice it up!

Given the complexity, addressing the above is a daunting task (lots of moving parts). Roadblocks such as lack of resources, awareness, culture and funding to name a few, get in the way. Companies require an approach that ties it all together, develops a business case that maps to the organizations agenda and pain points. They need a roadmap. One that is based on the reality of their current situation and provides a plan for getting to their desired state. Most importantly it must be achievable and agreed to and key stakeholders. Why? Too often I hear about past initiatives that:

• Don’t involve the business
• Isn't supported by the executive team
• Had a poorly written (or no) business case
• Was developed in an IT bubble
• Isn't managed as a program

To quote Einstein “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them". So how do you develop the roadmap? That's another blog….

Review Summary: The Syntergy Replicator for SharePoint provides inter-farm replication services for MOSS 2007 and WWW v3.0. The installation and configuration manuals are well written and provide you with screen shots so you know where to find things and have a sense of context no matter what step you’re in during setup.

The user interface matches SharePoint’s look and feel to help reduce the learning curve of administrators. Assuming you have both farms within your grasp, you should be able to setup and configure simple replication within an hour - of course this doesn't include change control and having recent full backups before doing anything to a production system. 

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