IDC EXCERPT: Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) Rule Changes Take Effect Dec 1st
The upcoming amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for Electronic Discovery are expected to take effect on December 1, 2006. The adoption of these proposed changes has significant implications for corporate records and information management policies and infrastructure and would influence future investment plans.

The attached Excerpt, is from an IDC market analysis - "Worldwide Legal Discovery and Litigation Support Infrastructure 2006. 2010 Forecast: Building the Case for Proactive Records and Information Management Frameworks", by Vivian Tero. It includes the following sections: Essential Guidance, Related Research.

Are You Ready for the FRCP Rule Changes?
For CIOs and IT executives alike, there are important changes in the rules around electronic discovery coming into effect on December 1, 2006 that will forever transform the way that you manage your electronic content. These changes come in the form of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which are designed to acknowledge the significance of electronic evidence and address some of the practical discovery issues associated with it.

This white paper is designed to help you prepare for the FRCP amendments. Once complete, you will be certain of the more significant rules changes, identify what they mean to you, and leverage the expertise of other companies like yours by drawing from a list of best practices to help you begin planning for the requirements.

Study on Enterprise Content Management
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the use of technologies, tools, and methods associated with managing documents, content, and business processes.

The key objectives of this study were:
    1. To understand the ECM requirements of organizations across the United States;
    2. To identify top IT related concerns in 2006; and
    3. To identify sources of information IT professionals use for developing strategy and making cost-effective IT purchase
        decisions.

The survey was conducted online by Instant InfoSystems. Over 350 IT professionals from organizations with more than 1000 employees participated in the survey. 76% of the respondents held middle and senior management positions. Majority of respondents (51%) held senior executive positions such as CIO, CTO, Director of Information Technology and Vice President of Information Technology.

Email retention and storage management were among the top five IT concerns for 2006. Cost reduction, compliance, security and eliminating spam were other top concerns.

RightFax Shared Services Module
RightFax 9.3 introduces support for multiple RightFax application servers to utilize and share a single RightFax database. This enables the capacity of the RightFax Enterprise Server to be multiplied by combining two or more servers that share a common database. At the time of RightFax 9.3 general availability, up to four RightFax Servers are supported by the RightFax Shared Services Module.

Advantages and Benefits:

• Loads are balanced within the network. RightFax services are shared by multiple machines to balance the workload from many RightFax clients. With multiple RightFax Servers in a shared configuration, RightFax services and resources are shared for load-balancing. RightFax resource folders containing items such as fax images and cover sheets are shared among all the RightFax Servers in the shared database configuration. A shared folder can be located on a high availability server such as a clustered server or a Storage Area Network (SAN) to make the use of this configuration even more redundant. Furthermore, certain RightFax services can be installed on remote computers to distribute workload.
  
• Multiple RightFax servers share all of the data in the SQL database. This includes users, delegates, phonebook entries, distribution lists and document data such as fax status. The data is available to all the administrators and clients in the network and offers a single point of administration.
  
• All information about received faxes is stored on the SQL server and is available to all clients in the network. RightFax 9.3 introduces a centralized receive queue in SQL to receive and process inbound faxes from any remote DocTransport (e.g., remote BoardServer) attached to any of the servers in the shared configuration. This feature is discussed in more detail in the "New Receive Queue in SQL" section.
  
  The advantages of shared services are significant. Now, inbound faxes from multiple RightFax Servers and any attached remote BoardServers can be processed by any of the RightFax application servers in the database collective. This eliminates bottlenecks due to slow communications and improves processing speed so inbound faxes can be received efficiently by their business owners.
  
• A common database helps maintain integrity of RightFax data. Redundant data is eliminated which saves storage space. Because data such as users, groups, signatures and cover sheets are in a common location, management is easier. In addition, data integrity can increase because duplication of data among disparate servers is no longer necessary. The following diagram depicts two RightFax Servers sharing a single database, along with common disk storage, making this a redundant, easy-to-manage solution.

Offline Synchronization in ZANTAZ EAS Enables Remote Users to Seamlessly Access Archived Email Messages Offline
ZANTAZ EAS version 5.0 expands the capabilities of the offline synchronization feature for MS Outlook users. This feature has been enhanced to provide a more seamless user experience. A new offline synchronization option referred to as “drizzle mode” or “continuous synchronization” has been added, and can be set through the client installer or a Client Permissions task. With drizzle mode, the user is able to toggle drizzle on or off within the given Outlook session. This is done by selecting the ‘Continuous Offline Synchronization’ option under the ‘Actions’ menu in Outlook – this presents a side menu with the options to ‘Resume Synchronization’ or ‘Suspend Synchronization’.

Cantata Brooktrout

The TR114 series of fax boards including all digital, analog and DID/Combo boards are end of life and have been discontinued. As of January 1, 2007, IIS will no longer accept orders for any of the following items:

    TR114+uP2C
    TR114+uP2D
    TR114+uP4C
    TR114+uP4D

In addition, the DID Power Supply will no longer be available as of January 1, 2007:

IIS recommends customers purchase the next generation fax platforms, the TR1034 or SR140, which offer the same fax performance at faster speeds or over IP networks.

RightFax

RightFax Tech Tip:
How long will data migration take when you upgrade to RightFax 9.3?

When planning an upgrade to RightFax 9.3, it is important to consider the amount of time the upgrade will take. To ensure data integrity the migration of data from a RightFax database to a Microsoft SQL database is performed record by record. The migration will upgrade about 20,000 documents per hour, or 500,000 documents per day. Instant InfoSystems has experienced some upgrades to take up to a full day with just the data migration process.

If you have an environment with a large number of records, you may want to consider the following:

1. Evaluate whether you need to keep all the fax records. If your retention policy allows it, you can run a FaxAge prior to the upgrade to reduce the number of records to be migrated.

2. Clean up old fax accounts no longer needed. Many times accounts are not cleaned out of the RightFax database when employees leave a company. If initial retention policies were not implemented, old faxes may still reside on the server.

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