google's disruptive feature

Google recently announced that from now on Gmail users can set their own custom sent time. This could be very disruptive to ediscovery's most popular embedded metadata "email sent time" if enterprise communication applications like Outlook, Lotus Notes etc adopt this. On one hand it was the number one requested feature by users on web because users have to participate in contests, they miss deadlines etc. But on the other it will make tracking email chronology nearly impossible.

Backup and storage trends

With ever increasing complication and data explosion the data backup strategies are folding and unfolding complexities in newer dimensions. There is data explosion, then there are increasing recovery demands in form of litigations, investigations, attrition and need for better compliance and transparency. As a result the backup windows are getting shorter. And to top it all is limited IT budget. Some of the important aspects in 2008 would be
1) The retention and the data discovery market is composed of a complex set of interrelated and interdependent technologies.
2) The archival errors, crashes and missing information are difficult to troubleshoot
3) There are too many approaches for retention and discovery (LAN free, On Tape etc.) which drive technologies and in turn are drive by technologies
4) There is more data to back up than ever before
5) With global clients and locations there is less planned downtime during which to complete backups. The tussle between IT and business folks over this common place.
6) Business owners want more frequent backups and faster restores. No one wants a 24 hour dataloss in an unplanned downtime.
7) IT operations must improve backup and restore service with its existing budget. A big chunk of IT budget goes into maintenance of running infra. Storage budget is normally less than 10%.