Microsoft Exchange 2010

Database is an integral part of any application. When working with Microsoft Exchange, it is something which can’t be parted with. The database contains all the mails, contacts, user data and a lot of other information. A lot of corruption problems can occur due to an Exchange Database such as log file issues, antivirus scanning, database shutdown etc. Hence to ensure a speedy recovery and smooth functioning of the database and thus the server, a system administrator has to use some Microsoft Exchange Server Recovery tools.

Here is a scenario illustrating the corruption of Microsoft Exchange Server Database. Remember if working as an Administrator of Exchange Server you have encountered the following situations:

• You are unable to start Information Store Service.
• Clients are unable to send/receive emails and even the server restart does not solve the problem.
• You have restored the database from a backup which was offline but the database is still not consistent.
• When you run database integrity check – Isinteg, the following error message displays on the screen:

“Error 4294966746: JET_errDatabaseInconsistent”

Cause of the error:

The information store has got corrupted. Either one or both of the private store and public store have got corrupted.

Solution to the error:

Before you begin solving the problem, it is recommended that you take entire backup of Information Store. This will help you to cope up with the situation if Information Store crashes. Now just follow the following simple steps:

• When you try to start the Information Store, some error messages application event logs occur, generated by Exchange Server. Analyze all those messages and logs.
• To check the Exchange Database’s integrity (Pub.edb and Priv.edb), run eseutil/mh command. If database is inconsistent, it shows ‘Dirty Shutdown’ state but this doesn’t ensure that database is corrupt. The state can also appear if all of the logs of transaction were not committed.
• Perform a soft database recovery and do a replay of all the transaction logs. To perform this task for the effected database, run eseutil/r command.
• If soft recovery doesn’t give the desired results, run hard database repair. Run eseutil/p and delete whole of the .log and .chk files.
• Now you have to check for the previously stated symptoms. They should not occur now. If you are able to work successfully with the database, then it is repaired. Next, you have to defragment and fix database issues, so run the following commands in sequence – eseutil /d and isinteg -pri -fix –test alltests
• But if the problem is unresolved and you are not able to work with the database, then you will have to switch to a 3rd party Exchange Server Recovery tool, so that you can diagnose the database and repair it properly and more effectively. A Microsoft Exchange’s recovery utility allows for an easy database repair while using safe and yet powerful procedures of scanning.

Microsoft Exchange Recovery Tool: It is a professional tool to repair corrupted Exchange databases. It extracts the mailboxes in .pst files. The tool is easy to use and advanced recovery features are provided in it. It can also be used to recover the mailboxes which are deleted and inaccessible STM data.

Microsoft’s partners are saying that users are not in a hurry to upgrade to Exchange 2010. Market researchers have also concluded that the adoption of Exchange 2010 will get delayed until late 2011.

Microsoft has claimed savings by the use of Exchange 2010 but customers are not likely to buy it. The email system, however, has earned appreciation from its testers still users are not queuing up to buy.

There are many reasons behind this lag. First of all, Microsoft’s claims about savings do not appear as appearing compelling to users. While certainly there is truth in the saving claims of Microsoft, but an organization needs to have the correct environment to take proper advantage claimed by it. It might be a good decision for an organization to buy Exchange 2010 if it wants to move to the cloud some of its mailboxes, or if the organization is in a good condition to change its voicemail system. Microsoft’s claim of storage saving is still debatable! The only non-debatable fact is that not many organizations have yet shown interest in buying the new email system.

Yet another reason is that it is too early a shift after Exchange 2007. Organizations have waited for a long time for Exchange 2007 and many changes have broke the ISV and internal processes (i.e. to remove the Recipient Update Service) and also because it was a difficult install process. Just after shifting to 2007, migrating to 2010 will be a lot of unplanned work for organizations.

Even users are not yet interested, but some feature innovation is extremely good in Exchange 2010. Hybrid cloud innovation makes a good sense and is useful for businesses of any size.

Metalogix has surveyed more that 800 administrators and found that around half of them are still using Exchange 2003, and on top of that only 20% of them planned to upgrade to 2010. The survey was conducted shortly after the release of 2010. Apart from the fact that Exchange 2010 was released before the survey, most of the administrators planned to migrate to 2007, therefore the conclusion by Metalogix that the adoption of Exchange 2010 will not increase for at least two years more.

Despite user skepticism, Microsoft is marketing its new exchange server as a cost cutting choice. According to the cost saving calculator of Microsoft, users can save hundreds of thousands of dollars every year if they switch from 2003 to 2010. Most of the calculation requires use of the new exchange as a unified communication server. Most of the savings are in the form of third-party fees for services like voicemail, archiving and mobility. If those services are found in house, then savings may not be found.

So we have had Exchange 2010 for a little over a month and so far hasn’t given us too many problems. Migration was an experience I don’t want to repeat in a hurry but the EDA or Exchange Deployment Assistant greased the wheels a bit.

Here are some of our findings so far. Bearing in mind we have only had the system live a few weeks and we’re bound to have plenty yet to discover. So far our time with the platform has been positive.

• OWA interoperability – Outlook Web Access now plays nicely with others. Not only does it offer almost everything Outlook 2010 is supposed to, you can now also use it with other browsers. Microsoft have opened it up so it works well in Opera, Firefox and even Safari. A very good development in a platform, especially for an organization who uses multiple operating systems.
• No client necessary – While we’re waiting for Office 2010 for Outlook, we found we don’t actually need it yet. We will to enjoy the other features, but for now we can use it happily without it. Even down to the sounds for calendar alerts.
• Availability – With the death of local replication, the new Database Availability Grouping is a godsend. Multiple versions of databases on multiple machines allows our availability to hit 99.99%. It took a while to get right, but when we did there were sighs of relief all round.
• Self Service - The bane of our lives is slowly easing. The new Exchange Control Panel means the users can manage their own groups, addresses, holiday messages, rules, virus protection and much more. They can use it through a web page and manage many of the tasks that used to take up the majority of our time.
• Exchange Test Tool – So simple yet so effective. This is a network or internet tool that allows us to test different facets of a rollout before making them live. From it we can test SMTP messaging, ActiveSync and Outlook Anywhere. Useful.
• Improved views – Not only do we now have the conversation view, which allows for message threading for longer conversations but we no longer have the annoying previous and next buttons. Now we have scroll bars, which makes the whole message navigation thing a breeze. If we have long running support cases, this view makes it easy to see who said what, and when. That way we don’t repeat what someone has just said, or ask the user to try something twice. Happier user, happier us.

We won’t get to fully utilize the system until Outlook 2010 arrives, but what we have seen so far is positive. The Outlook Web Access is a good alternative for message management, and offers much more than the old version. The fact that we don’t have to use it with Internet Explorer is a definite bonus.

The impending launch of Microsoft Exchange 2010 got quite a few SaaS vendors worried when they first heard about it. The new built-in archiving features of the platform were one of the main reasons they were in business.

I don’t think it is the end of SaaS email archiving services, not by a long shot. Firstly the email archiving is basic, and requires the clients to use Outlook 2010, which isn’t out yet except in beta as part of the Office 2010 suite.

Secondly using Exchange 2010 involves a significant investment in hardware, software and support. Something which many organizations just can’t afford right now. Considering many vendors offer the equivalent benefits already for a much lower cost, take up of Exchange and Outlook 2010 is expected to be limited for a year or so. Or at least until the economies of the world pick up.

The Exchange archival model also depends on the storage capabilities of the company. Unless many companies drastically improve their storage solutions, mailboxes will be limited, or restricted and the archive facility will lay idle. While hard drives are relatively inexpensive, they are still an added expense.

Many organization don’t allow full-text indexing on their Exchange servers. We all know this puts quite an overhead on the Exchange server, and will only work efficiently on low scale or low use platforms. Larger scale organizations simply can’t afford the slowdown in performance full indexing involves. The multi-mailbox search in Exchange 2010 depends on full-text indexing to work, therefore is largely useless.

Email archiving is based on three requirements. Storage, discovery and compliance. Exchange 2010 only addresses two of these concerns and those only on a basic level. The storage needs a hardware solution to make it work. Exchange has done much to improve how it handles storage by allowing multiple copies of databases, mailboxes and data. E-discovery is only addressed on a basic level, and as we see indexing involves compromises. Also emails can only be copied to another mailbox, not extracted from the system and provided immediately.

Compliance isn’t even touched by the new platform, so many organizations, especially those regulated by the SEC will still need a third party solution.

Exchange a made great strides in increasing management, usability, scalability and seems to be trying to drive down the cost of ownership. There are compromises though, the initial installation will cost a lot, both in time, resources and money. A new infrastructure will most likely be needed, involving the hardware, software and network. Then training for the support staff, as the new platform has many new features, and ways of doing things.

So SaaS email archiving vendors don’t have too much to worry about just yet. It’s going to be a year or three before Exchange 2010 is rolled out across the globe.

It is always a better option to be safe than sorry. And in this tough economic era, people really don’t want to take any risks. That’s why many of you look for the trial version of Microsoft exchange 2010, in order to get themselves accustomed to all the features and concepts which this software includes. So you all can install the software, it is available at present. The installation process is simple and quite similar to the others software. You don’t need to do any thing new to get the task completed.

The basic requirement of this software is Windows Server 2008. Without the support of this Windows server, you may find some problem in the installation process of Microsoft exchange 2010. A good alternative to it is its Enterprise version. The basic reason behind it is that many of the Exchange 2010 features works only on these Windows system. So, there is not much option available to you in this respect.

Ok so after you successfully installed the software, now is the time to for you to install several pre requisites related to it. Such components including Web server, Web database, Web Net framework and so on. There is a whole lot of list for that. It will be better to install all the requisites for the proper functioning. However, a lot of components have been reduced in the Microsoft exchange 2010. You might have heard about Fail over clustering, you do not need to install it. Like this many other complex things have also been eliminated.

All these tasks will be performed by you only. You just need to select the options which you want in the Microsoft exchange 2010 and then all will be done. There is a feature in which you can dynamically install the mail lists along with the installation of the software’s requisites. So, this will save your lots of precious time. You need to click on various things before the actual install button appears. So, just have a little patience. If you will do all the thing with a cool mind, then your mind will not feel the tiredness. But once you get over with the installation process, it is time for you to start some serious work. Though it might take some time, but think of the benefits which you are going to experience afterwards.  It is really tempting to think about it.

Microsoft have concluded the testing, tweaked the code, informed the early adopters and are now ready to release Exchange 2010. They said it should ship on the 9th November 2009, which the hosted version being made available sometime in May 2010.

Exchange 2010 is a 64bit server which includes enhanced email management, new storage options, different deployment features, built in archiving, database clustering, and an all new Outlook Web Access client. This version of Exchange is something of a hybrid, built to serve as either part of a hosted architecture or a corporate one. The hosted version has yet to be made available so the jury is out on the productivity option of that, but the corporate version has been well and truly tested.

Microsoft already hosts Live@Edu users on the new platform, and there are over 5 million of them. So you could say it is the biggest beta test around. It gave Microsoft an excellent live proving ground to analyze how it was used, and how the new features handled a real workload. It also gave them plenty of opportunity to optimize the code and fix as many bugs as they could before launch.

The software giant had said in a previous release that Exchange 2010 had been specifically designed for high availability and cross domain integration using Server 2008 clustering and other features. This is apparently what prompted the hosted version of Exchange.

While Exchange 2010 improves on many of the shortcomings of the previous versions, it also makes rolling it out much more complicated. For a start it’s 64bit only, it needs Server 2008 to work properly and that usually means new or at least recent hardware. Testers so far are skeptical about achieving high levels of availability to begin with because of the complexity of the system and its requirements.

To achieve a good level of service with massive amounts of data, multiple copies of databases, load balancing and differing server roles is going to take a lot of planning and a meticulous attention to detail to get right. Those who take the time to get it right first time will reap the rewards of what will be a very stable system.

Clustering technology, replication, multiple databases and low cost disk support means that reliability and scalability can be built on an existing foundation by replicating small servers within and between data centers.

Exchange 2010 is the first in a host of new Microsoft Office products being released over the next year. The others include Office 2010, Office Communications Manager 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 and Sharepoint Server 2010. It’s going to be a busy year in the IT departments of some larger corporations.

Microsoft Monday shipped the final release of Exchange 2010, ushering in not so much the latest version of its messaging server as the first updated piece of its unified communications and collaboration platform.

The release was no surprise, given the fact that last month Microsoft released the software to manufacturing — the so-called RTM — and said it would ship Monday as part of the agenda at its annual TechEd Europe conference.

Review: Best and worst of Exchange 2010

Next year, Microsoft will update SharePoint Server and Office Communications Server (OCS) to the 2010 moniker. The server duo along with Exchange forms a foundation for Microsoft’s unified communication platform. SharePoint 2010 and OCS 2010 are expected to ship in May or June of next year, although Microsoft has not released an official ship date.

“We are very much a Microsoft shop, and it is because of that integration,” says George Hamin, director of e-business and information systems for Subaru Canada. The company is fully deployed on Exchange 2010 and it also runs OCS, SharePoint, Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager and a laundry list of other Microsoft software. “I have tried in the past using third-party products and tried to integrate it all. Our previous phone system had it but their concept of unified messaging was unified to the Outlook client and not to the Exchange server. So voice mail did not come through to your cell phone, voice mail was not available on the Outlook Web Access portal. So it was not true unified messaging. There was no concept of presence.”

In the long run, Hamin like others sees e-mail not so much as a separate entity but part of a larger platform. Monday, Microsoft focused on e-mail, but three weeks ago the focus was on SharePoint 2010 during the annual conference around that server software. And next week, as part of its annual Professional Developer’s Conference, developers will be brought into the equation.

The Exchange, OCS, SharePoint trio of servers also forms the core of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite, a set of hosted services, including LiveMeeting, that can be used separately or together.

The suite also has a set of companion security tools as part of the Forefront lineup. On Monday, Microsoft released Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server, an online messaging security service. SharePoint and OCS will get similar tools.

One of the points Microsoft emphasizes with Exchange is that its architecture supports both online and on-premises deployments, and company officials say that Exchange 2010 is available as the foundation of its Exchange Online service with some limitations.

“We won’t have flexibility to run custom code for a single tenant,” says Rajesh Jha, senior vice president for Exchange. “We have a flavor or Exchange Online services called Exchange Dedicated service and it is a single tenant model and you can have custom code. “The Exchange 2010 server released Monday is a 64-bit only server that includes new storage and deployment options, enhanced in-box management capabilities, built-in e-mail archiving, new database clustering, additional hardware options and a revamped Outlook Web Access client.

BERLIN, Nov. 9 / Today at the Microsoft Tech-Ed Europe 2009 conference in Germany, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop announced that Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is now available worldwide to help businesses reduce costs, protect communications and delight e-mail users. Along with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010 is part of a generation of solutions designed for increased business productivity and cost savings.

In today’s challenging economic environment, innovative use of new information technologies can result in improved operational efficiency and reduced costs. The combination of cost savings coupled with improved productivity and innovation is defined as “the New Efficiency.”

Elop also announced the release of Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server, which helps Exchange Server customers further safeguard business information.

“Exchange Server 2010 customers are already reporting cost savings of up to 70 percent thanks to a simplified high-availability model and support for lower-cost storage. Customers are also seeing productivity gains of more than 20 percent with a universal inbox that delivers e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging and text messaging consistently across virtually any device,” Elop said. “Together with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the combined cost savings and improved productivity helps customers generate long-term business success.”

According to a commissioned study of technology early adopters conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft Corp., a customer can see a payback period of less than six months when upgrading to either Exchange Server 2010* or Windows Server 2008 R2.**

Customers such as Bank of America Corp., Carnival Cruise Line, Global Crossing, Lifetime Products, Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc., NEC Philips, Subaru Canada Inc. and Telekom Austria Group are deploying Exchange Server 2010 and report impressive results with the new server.

“We have increased storage eightfold at 25 percent of the cost with Exchange Server 2010 and our employees are seeing a reduction of unwanted e-mail by more than 70 percent, freeing us up to focus on more important client issues,” said Steve Derbyshire, operations director, NEC Philips.

Organizations including Automatic Data Processing Inc., BMW, Baker Tilly, the City of Miami, Energizer, Getronics and Pella Corp. are deploying Windows 7 and report gains in efficiency for both business users and IT. Customers report improved user productivity and easier information access, reduced costs with streamlined management, and reduced risk through better security and increased desktop control. Supporting detail is available in recent total cost of ownership studies and analyst survey reports at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/default.aspx.

Businesses are seeing equally significant results from Windows Server 2008 R2, with customers including Continental Airlines Inc. (U.S.), Chester Zoo (U.K.), Combell Group NV (Belgium), FinPro (Finland), Wacom Europe GmbH (Germany) and Wortell (Netherlands) noting cost savings through server consolidation, reduced power consumption and improved service levels.

“With Windows Server 2008 R2, we’ve been able to dramatically reduce costs in our IT infrastructure while simplifying management,” said Phil Morris, IT manager, North England Zoological Society/Chester Zoo. “By virtualizing our environment with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, we have reduced the number of servers in our environment by 80 percent while maintaining the high availability our retail staff, researchers and management team need.”

“Windows Server 2008 R2 brings many efficiencies to our customers, including enabling new virtualization scenarios,” said Bill Laing, corporate vice president for the Windows Server and Solutions Division at Microsoft. “We’ve added the next generation of hypervisor and the new ability to perform Live Migration of virtual machines. Many customers are already seeing tangible results since deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.”

Elop said more than 45,000 partners are trained on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010, with several partners announcing new services and solutions today, including Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Avanade, Dell Inc., EMC Corp., Kaspersky Lab, Symantec Corp. and Unisys Corp.

Exchange Server 2010 and Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange are available now for trial at http://www.thenewefficiency.com, along with more information about Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and partner solutions.

Ongoing Commitment to Developers and IT Professionals
As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to providing developers and IT professionals with the technology to drive productivity gains within their organizations, the following announcements also were also made today at Tech-Ed Europe 2009.

• The community technology preview for SQL Server 2008 R2 will be available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2.aspx.
• For use in building multilanguage Web sites and client applications, Microsoft Translator widgets and APIs are now in beta. Many European languages are now supported by Microsoft Translator. Additional details can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9694254.
• Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group will release new guidance that extends the full Security Development Lifecycle process to a wider external software developer audience, by enabling developers using the Agile development model to integrate Microsoft’s SDL processes, tools and technologies directly into their software development environments, helping to ensure their applications are secure and their customers have a safer, more trusted computing experience.

Virtual Tech-Ed Europe Participation
There are multiple ways for those not in attendance to experience Tech-Ed Europe 2009.

• Visit the Tech-Ed global pressroom at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/default.mspx for additional details regarding all announcements made at Tech-Ed Europe 2009.
• View the live stream of the executive keynote address from the Tech-Ed 2009 global pressroom today at 3:30 p.m. CET/6:30 a.m. PST.
• Participate in the post-keynote webcast Q&A today at 5 p.m. CET/8 a.m. PST, immediately following the executive keynote address. Submit questions to the executive panel by visiting the Tech-Ed global pressroom.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

* Source: Forrester Consulting: “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Exchange 2010,” November 2009.
** Source: Forrester Consulting: “The Total Economic Impact of Windows Server 2008 R2,” November 2009.

This information is about pre-release software and therefore is subject to change. It is provided without warranty of any kind, express or implied

By Liau Yun Qing, ZDNet Asia

SINGAPORE–In a bid to expand its international marketing efforts around Google Apps, the search giant last week launched a global initiative it calls “Gone Google”. But, one local company cites user inertia and learning curve as reasons for not jumping on the bandwagon just yet.

Deepak Ramanathan, the company’s Asia-Pacific head of enterprise marketing, said in an e-mail interview that Google is focusing on digital screens for the campaign to keep the advertisements “fresh and up-to-date”, and has placed advertisements in 17 digital billboards across the Singapore Changi Airport’s three terminals.

Ramanathan said Google sees “huge opportunity” in enterprises and has “thousands of” Google Apps business users in Singapore and Southeast Asia, ranging from small and midsize businesses (SMBs), to large enterprises and educational institutions.

At the Gartner Symposium in Orlando last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had said: “[Enterprise is] the next big billion-dollar opportunity after our display [ad] business.”

The company hopes marketing Google Apps will further promote enterprise moves to cloud computing.

But, at least one organization is doubtful Google Apps’ feature set can match their current office productivity software staples.

User inertia, learning curve
Local company Digital Scanning Corporation (DSC) is among those that will not be switching to Google Apps just yet.

In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, DSC CTO Wong Ee Sing said the organization currently has no plans to push for a company-wide migration to Google Apps, though the IT department had tried out the suite and found it adequate for day-to-day use.

Wong cited “user inertia and learning curve” as some of the company’s concerns.

“None of our users are interested in re-learning a new application, especially when the one they are currently using works just fine,” he explained. “If we want to move to Google Apps, we would have to uninstall [our current office suite] from every PC to force users to learn Google Apps, [which is] not great for productivity.”

He added that DSC employees in general seem to be more concerned with presentation rather than content of a document. “Google Apps do not provide such rich formatting capabilities. This mindset would have to change or be changed for Google Apps to take off,” Wong said.

The company also has “nagging worries over security and confidentiality“, he noted.

In response to these concerns, Ramanathan told ZDNet Asia in a follow-up e-mail that the “true power of Google Apps is the ability to collaborate online and share documents in real-time, from any PC or Web-enabled mobile phone”.

“While client-based productivity software has many more rich formatting capabilities than cloud-based productivity software today, the gap is closing,” he said. “Meanwhile, cloud-based productivity software can provide additional functionality that client-based software does not currently have, such as translation of documents into 42 languages.”

Users who like Microsoft Outlook, he added, can try an application called Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, which allows Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business e-mail, contacts and calendar. These people can also use Gmail’s Web interface to access information when they are not on their work computer, he said.

PointStar, a Google Apps reseller, added in an e-mail interview: “Google has dedicated teams of engineers to constantly monitor and maintain data security as well as data center protection procedures that conform to the SAS 70 standard.”

Wong believes, too, that the cloud computing model will eventually prevail. Although DSC is not focusing on the platform yet, he does not discount the possibility of migrating to the Web. “As more applications move to the cloud, our entire desktop experience will reside in the cloud and tightly,” he said.

Company that “Gone Google”
And while DSC is biding its time with Google Apps, another local company recently made the switch.

In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, NGR Engineering’s CTO Gilles Depardieu said the company made the decision to migrate after its previous server–running Microsoft Exchange–crashed following an attack by hackers from Russia and China.

The company’s CEO was also looking to reduce associated IT costs from having to consult Exchange platform specialists whom NGR did not have internally, and who were “expensive and busy” to engage when needed, Depardieu said, adding that this also created “lots of invoices” that had to be exchanged between the finance and IT departments.

The company evaluated other options, such as running managed/hosted Exchange servers with local service providers, but found the price “too high”, he said.

NGR conducted a pilot test before deciding to move to Google Apps, Depardieu said, noting that companies looking to make the switch should prepare for user resistance to change. He added that changes to local configuration on each PC can also be upsetting for some users.

“The CEO has to be on the CTO’s side from the start [and] the CTO would have a lot to do to convince other executives,” he said. “Users will complain about how slow the migration from their old local data [on the user PC] to cloud data is, [which] might take days, as uploading is always slower than downloading.”

Gerry Chng, partner at Ernst & Young, said organizations looking to adopt cloud computing should first consider some key issues before making the commitment. In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, Chng outlined these areas:

• As public cloud computing utilizes the Internet, if they are using public clouds, organizations should consider whether their existing infrastructure can handle the demands to access applications and data over the Internet.
• Companies need to review their business continuity plans for provisions in the event of unavailability of applications or data in the cloud.
• They need to relook internal policies and regulatory requirements on data protection before deciding how much data, and in which form data should be hosted in the cloud.
• Organizations need to realize even though users demand mobility, high-speed Internet access is not always readily available. For example, an executive on a plane will not be able to access his cloud-based e-mail if he cannot connect to the Internet.
• Lack of open standards for existing cloud applications may pose a hindrance or risk for organizations in migrating existing applications or developing new applications for the cloud.

Chng also noted that availability and confidentiality posed risks to information security when companies move to the cloud.

“As the applications or data are provisioned from the cloud, organizations become highly dependent on the availability of the cloud service provider and Internet connection,” he said. “While an organization can plan for bandwidth, one cannot always prepare for unexpected events such as an earthquake disrupting optical fiber submarine links to the Internet.”

Chng added that organizations typically prefer to handle confidential data internally to prevent sensitive information from being leaked out.

“The challenge of confidentiality is amplified when data is handled, stored and processed through a third party,” he said.

The City of Los Angeles has decided that its 30,000 employees will “Go Google,” as the city has selected Gmail as its new email system. This decision might spell a troubling trend for Microsoft in the Enterprise Software market.

Councilman Tony Cardenas made the motion to usher in the Gmail era in the City of Angels, calling it, “a state-of-the art e-mail system.” The $7.25 million contract was awarded by a vote of 12-0 to Google.

The decision ended a year-long battle between email vendors to win the contract to support Los Angeles City workers. The City Council considered a number of other software vendors including Microsoft.

Not everyone in the Los Angeles City Council is completely sold on the idea of going to the cloud. Prior to the vote a number of the Council members had voiced concerns about turning over the city’s data to the cloud.

Councilman Paul Koretz said, “It’s unclear if this is cutting edge, or the edge of a cliff and we’re about to step off.” Critics say they aren’t convinced of the cost-savings or Gmail’s unproven ability to handle the security measures necessary for law enforcement usage.

However if the City of Los Angeles can successfully implement Gmail as the second largest city in the nation, it could serve as an example to smaller cities looking to re-evaluate their mail system. At least that’s what Google hopes.

Microsoft lobbied hard to keep Los Angeles from choosing Google, sending executives and outside advocates to talk to council members. The maker of the ubiquitous Outlook/Exchange email software combination stands to lose a lot of money from companies that decide to go Google.

This will be a grand experiment to see how thousands of city employees take to Gmail’s threaded conversations and relatively-awkward meeting scheduling. How do you think this large-scale Gmail experiment will play out?