SearchSMB: Email archiving for SMBs: No experience required

August 2 2006

Yesterday, IBM announced a new hardware/software solution for e-mail archiving, compatible with both Domino and Exchange...

IBM says its new email archiving appliance is so easy to install that small and medium-size businesses can have it up and running in less than a day.
IBM's DB2 CommonStore Email Archiving Solution is an integrated hardware and software product that works with existing email servers. It offloads messages and attachments and stores them in an archive for long-term access. ...

The solution is powered by an IBM BladeCenter Server with an AMD Opteron processor. CommonStore supports Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. It also comes preloaded with IBM DB2 Content Manager, Tivoli Storage Manager and WebSphere Application Server.

Susan Eustis, analyst and president of WinterGreen Research Inc. in Lexington, Mass., said CommonStore is ideal for SMBs. She said it gives IBM a "huge edge" in the SMB market for email archiving.
Yet more focus on SMB from IBM.

Link: SearchSMB: Email archiving for SMBs: No experience required >

Ed Brill Cambridge, MA USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [22]

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  1. 1  Alan Bell http://www.astoryforbedtime.com | 8/2/2006 10:46:36 AM

    not too sure about what exactly a bladecentre is to be honest, but my impression is that is is a box into which you slot "blades" each blade being a motherboard packaged like an expansion card. Is this product a preconfigured blade then? Do blades have hard disks locally attached to them? If so then how big is it? if not, then how is it delivered pre-configured if you have to map a bit of a NAS or SAN device to the blade?

    Should a SMB company with a 19 inch rack of assorted boxes be looking at this, or is it just for people who have already got a bladecentre box?

  1. 2  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/2/2006 10:50:49 AM

    I think it is being sold more as an "appliance" model and as such, it would be stand-alone.

    from { Link }

    it has another link to PartnerWorld, which you should be able to access.

  1. 3  Alan Bell http://www.astoryforbedtime.com | 8/2/2006 10:52:49 AM

    having just done some more research (which I probably should have done first) I see that blades are a bit fatter than I thought, and can have hard drives on them. It looks like they max out at 367gig with 5 hard drives in them.

  1. 4  Jerry Gassie  | 8/2/2006 11:43:59 AM

    367 GB? That's not much. Is this supposed to assist with SOX compliance? So far, most Domino solutions I've seen are not any better than sticking with built in Domino archiving policies.

  1. 5  Brian Green  | 8/2/2006 11:59:51 AM

    A scheduled "load compact -A mail" works for us. Archived mail is placed on a different Domino server, with SAN drives. Archive settings are enforced by policy.

  1. 6  Steven  | 8/2/2006 12:18:24 PM

    @4: Blades often go with SANs, so that fact the some have very little internal HDD space is not really that big an issue.

  1. 7  Jerry Gassie  | 8/2/2006 12:51:29 PM

    @6: Certainly if that's the implication here (limitation of a smaller component of larger SAN environment), then that's perfectly understandable.

    @5: We do the same, although recently we have been open to alternatives to assist with quick administrative searches and other possible SOX related considerations.

  1. 8  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 8/2/2006 1:43:02 PM

    The configuration listed here is for an Opteron blade, which is either the LS20 or LS21. The LS20 is limited to 2 drives, the LS21 uses a single drive. The 5-drive capability is for a HS21, which is a dual core 2-way Xeon blade. That has 2 drives on the blade, then you use a SCSI interconnect to an extra Storage and I/O (SIO) blade that has 3 more drives on it.

    I don't have any need for this product so I won't be bothering my IBM rep for more details, but it would be interesting to see how it's packaged because there are a LOT of moving parts to consider. It took us nearly 9 months to finalize the configuration on a BladeCenter and DS4300 SAN.

  1. 9  Colin Williams http://www.guttedgeek.com | 8/2/2006 2:35:02 PM

    Good timing! We're looking for something along these lines...now I can tell our BP what we want!

  1. 10  Joel Phelan http://www.steinmart.com | 8/2/2006 2:51:36 PM

    I also am not up on Bladecenter, but does it have WORM ability for "compliance mode"? We are using EmailXtender from EMC and in the class, one of the things that was mentioned repeatedly was their Celera hardware for just this purpose, which is required by many organizations and government entities. Basically, in this mode, once you write to the hardware, it is there forever, and cannot be deleted. We don't use it here, as we have no need (we are backing up to a SAN), but I'm curious.

  1. 11  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 8/2/2006 4:06:37 PM

    The BladeCenter is just a general purpose chassis for hardware. You can put whatever you want into the slots, from Opteron, Xeon, and even Power5 servers to network modules. I think Nortel is even working on moving their PBX platform to a blade form factor (albeit with HP).

    IBM has the TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592, which includes WORM capability. I don't believe it is in the blade form factor, but it could be attached either via SCSI or fibre channel interconnects.

  1. 12  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 8/2/2006 4:12:02 PM

    I have not looked deeply at this product offering, but will push my standard disclaimer. It is not SarBox that drives data/mail retention (unless you are a public accounting firm or the client of a firm that has convinced you, wrongly, that it is (we will leave discussion of best practices for another day)). It is unique requirements from any number of potential legal and/or regulatory drivers.

  1. 13  Flemming Riis  | 8/2/2006 5:13:09 PM

    -Yet more focus on SMB from IBM.

    whats is IBM's definition of SMB ?

  1. 14  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 8/2/2006 5:44:47 PM

    IBM does not like to say, but I believe 500 ... 5000 employees

  1. 15  Flemming Riis  | 8/2/2006 5:57:23 PM

    -IBM does not like to say, but I believe 500 ... 5000 employees

    then it makes a little more sense

  1. 16  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 8/2/2006 6:51:17 PM

    Trackback:

    "Over on Ed Brill's blog, the announcement of IBM's E-Mail Archiving Solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) is addressed in a new posting. I have a few thoughts that companies considering this product for their Lotus Notes and/or Microsoft Exchange environments should think about before taking the plunge:..."

    { Link }

  1. 17  Phil Ayres http://improving-nao.blogspot.com | 8/3/2006 12:09:34 PM

    Its good to see that IBM is addressing email archiving at this end of the market. I would like to reinforce the message from (12) Christopher Byrne - SOX is not a good driver for email archiving, though I have seen that at least one organization felt it was necessary for 'rear-end' covering when targeted at email users in their finance group.

    Just for a bit of (dry) humor, here is a blog post comparing email archiving and a solar powered trash compactor now found in Boston: { Link }

  1. 18  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 8/5/2006 2:04:30 PM

    @13/14/15 - I just assumed that since some of the Express licensing had limits of 1000 users that was where IBM made the SMB cut.

  1. 19  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 8/5/2006 2:22:39 PM

    That would be the cut for "S". I have worked for companies in the 1000 to 4000 range and they were all in IBM's SMB sector.

  1. 20  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 8/7/2006 1:34:46 PM

    I wonder what SMB really means to IBM. I agree completely with the information from Wikipedia: { Link } Saying that 4000 user shops and 10 user shops are in the same group sounds ridiculous.

  1. 21  Nathan Wray  | 8/7/2006 3:56:14 PM

    @4 & @5 - For compliance I think you'd find CommonStore easier to deal with than standard Notes/Domino archiving. A single DB2 database keeps track of all of the content you move into CommonStore, so you have one place to search and export data from rather than the potential of thousands of Notes NSFs.

    It makes sense to me that IBM is offering this as an "appliance" on a bladecenter unit. CommonStore uses a suite of applications, so spreading out the applications across the blades will allow for maximum performance. And since there are multiple components, having a base system pre-configured will make this much easier and faster to deploy.

    Seperately, I think it's interesting that all of the comments have been based on the hardware or on the deffinitin of SMB. I think that's because there just aren't that many people using centralized archiving yet, or is there another reason?

  1. 22  kristina klein http://www.ziplip.com | 8/10/2006 6:51:11 PM

    @21 If you're referring to SOX when you discuss compliance, CommonStore might work. If you're referring to compliance with financial industry regulations (SEC 17a-4, NASD 3010/3110 or the Investment Advisor's Act), CommonStore is lacking the functionality to do email sampling and supervision required for broker/dealers, investment advisors etc.

    Another reason archiving is becoming a necessity has nothing to do with regulations and everything to do with liability and the cost of responding to subpoenas. Anyone that's had to pull and restore tapes to respond to a search request will find an email archive worthwhile.

    In the interest of full disclosure, my company (ZipLip) makes email archiving software for compliance, discovery, and mailbox management that is also compatible with Notes, Exchange and mixed environments...