You Should Get Some Legal Advice ...

I believe that information is becoming the single most precious asset in the world today.

And I believe that IT is poised to play an entirely new role as the "CFO of Information".

Part of that journey is becoming expert in the overlaps (and synergies) between IT thinking and other disciplines.

We've all had to get good at things like finance, logistics, project management, (ahem) internal marketing, business process reengineering, human resources and other decidedly non-technical disciplines.

I think it's inevitable that we'll have to add "legal" to this expanding portfolio.

More and more IT strategy in the future will be directly connected to legal implications of what we do with information.

And today, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Andy Cohen to the EMC blogosphere.  Andy's blog will focus on this important intersection between legal and IT.

Andy joins myself and Mark Lewis (EMC's CDO -- chief development officer) as part of the growing roster of EMC corporate bloggers.

Welcome, Andy!  Looking forward to seeing great posts on a variety of issues.

Comments

[Dave Vellante]

Once IT-only capabilities like email archiving are moving from the IT server room to the boardroom via the courtroom. I found this post on www.wikibon.org:

"Email archiving capabilities should no longer be focused on narrow IT interests (e.g. keeping the costs of storing emails low) and are now much more in the domain of the business, specifically the legal function within the business."

How does EMC address this need?

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Dave:

Fair question. The answer is "far more than you might think". I've covered many of the ways we do this for email on previous blog posts, but in summary:

- email categorization tools that can look at each email and spot opportunities for cost saving, risk avoidance, and (more recently) knowledge management applications.

- policy engines that can direct identified emails in different directions: low-cost archiving, compliant archiving, search and collaboration environments, even our new eDiscovery solutions (think "trouble ticket" for legal or HR)

- transparent access from email client -- it's hard to tell your email has been archived.

- tiered storage behind this for cost optimization, including Centera for both compliance and de-dupe of identical attachments.

- a large-scale professional services organization that has done literally thousands of projects

(the list goes on, but I think I have made my point ... it's a comprehensive story that goes far beyond a comment in a blog)

Whereas the email discussion is well understood, starting last summer we branched into the world of file systems with Infoscape, and -- yes -- the same challenges show up in file systems that we saw in email.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the comment.