We recently had a client who was looking to implement Exchange 2010 personal archives. For those that aren’t familiar with the feature, personal archives are essentially a second mailbox associated to a user’s primary mailbox. By creating a personal archive, companies can potentially get away from PST files for archiving of old mail. The personal archive can be stored on a different mailbox database, and isn’t cached if you’re running in cached mode. Nifty.

Of course it’s pretty well known that Microsoft requires a premium Exchange CAL to use Personal Archives, and that you also must be running the Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server 2010. Fair enough, even though I think personal archives is a feature that every company small or large can really benefit from and should be something Microsoft is pushing harder. What ends up being a confusing topic is what version of Outlook is needed to access the personal archive, and this is where our client ran into snags.

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Cloud computing has some strong elements, but be mindful of your legal exposure. Having your business information stored on the cloud does not appear to afford the same legal protection as storing it on your office PC.

IT has a history of latching onto hot trends and buzzwords, and the latest is no different: cloud computing. Let me first say that it’s an exciting concept, but not necessarily a new one. While it has evolved over the years, it’s had a number of names that date back to the early days of IT and MIS. Here’s a few you might have heard in previous decades: application service provider, hosted service provider, network computing, time-sharing, multitenancy. All of these are variations on the same theme – someone else hosts the system or application, the client using the system pays for only the portion they use, without the overhead expense of maintaining the infrastructure.

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