New Rules Make Firms Track E-Mails, IMs
"WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.
The rules, approved by the Supreme Court in April, require companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce "electronically stored information" as part of the discovery process, when evidence is shared by both sides before a trial.
The change makes it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where. Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of "virtual shredding," said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert
on technology and litigation.
James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co. (HAL) (HAL), said that large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data to comply with the rules. In addition to e-mail,
companies will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards, he said. Both federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of relevant electronic documents during discovery, but the new rules codify the practice, legal experts said.
The rules also require that lawyers provide information about where their clients' electronic data is stored and how accessible it is much earlier in a lawsuit than was previously the case. "
Excerpt from MyWay News. Article is copyright MyWay News.
Spending on Portal Initiatives Projected to Grow 30 Percent
Both large and small companies plan to expand their average budgets for enterprise portal initiatives by 35 percent to 40 percent in the coming year, according to a new report from the Aberdeen Group. Drivers behind this demand include initiatives to extend business applications across the enterprise and possibly into partner systems, along with plans to improve employee collaboration. Full Article Here.
Perspective: The rise and fall of IT
In the old days of DP, MIS and IT, the use of computers in companies was about tracking the business. Computers provided a retrospective snap shot (think financials or sales records) but were not used to actively operate the business--for example, developing products, selling, manufacturing or touching the customer...>full article
August 5 - VMware exec sees virtualization, virtual appliances boosting enterprise Linux adoption - Interviewfull article
VMware takes a stance of being operating-system agnostic, but do you see a particular synergy between virtualization and Linux?
Patrick Lin: They're very highly complementary. The first product we put out at VMware -- the first version of Workstation -- was actually based on Linux.
In a lot of cases, virtualization can allow you to migrate things into a different operating system environment without a lot of risk. Legacy re-hosting is one example. Another example is if a company has been predominantly a Windows shop but wants to start experimenting with Linux. One of the safest and least impactful ways to do that is to create some Linux VMs [virtual machines] on top of the existing virtualized infrastructure.
Virtualization ensures that that instance of Linux is completely isolated from all perspectives, including performance. VMware virtualization supports unmodified guest operating systems, which means that companies can choose whatever Linux type they want and run it. That really eases Linux's entry into environments that are dominated by Windows.
SMEs too busy to manage own websites
Small businesses are driving the growth of the online services market, according to new research.
A report from analyst house Yankee Group says that because small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack inhouse technical and marketing expertise -- and lack the time to learn about these areas -- they are more and more likely to hire an outsider to design and build their web presence for them.
Small companies are already offering e-commerce and other interactive e-services over the web and, as this continues, their needs for internet marketing services should grow as well, said the analyst.
Yankee Group says about 65 percent of SMEs have websites and 39 percent offer e-commerce, up 5 percent from a year ago.
These trends have led to solid growth in sales for web hosting (which will hit USD5.4 billion by 2010), web-based services (USD4.1 billion by 2010) and online marketing (USD9.3 billion by 2010).
Sanjeev Aggarawal, senior analyst at Yankee Group, said online marketing is "too complicated" for the average SME and so they choose to rely on online services companies which can advise them on how to get the most out of their web presence.
Sylvia Carr writes for Silicon.com.
Companies are broadening their use of business intelligence tools in an attempt to get more use out of the huge stores of data they're sitting on. full article