An interesting new archiving technology

Estorian is a start-up company in the Seattle area that has developed an interesting messaging archiving technology. I was given a demonstration of their technology a few weeks ago and was quite impressed.

Estorian’s Looking Glass offering is, at its core, an archiving technology. The system is designed to intercept electronic communication content, index it and store it in a database for future access, such as for e-discovery or regulatory compliance. Looking Glass is equipped with powerful search tools that will allow users to search for content using keywords, phrases, discussion threads and the like. The system includes single instance storage capabilities that can significantly reduce storage requirements, a quite serious problem according to many Osterman Research surveys conducted over the past several years.

However, Looking Glass is also designed as a policy management tool that can provide a number of other capabilities. For example, the system can track messages sent to or from an organization by IP address or domain. It can automatically notify decision makers when it detects violations of corporate policy or suspicious activity, such as e-mails that are sent to specific domains or that contain certain types of intellectual property. Statistics of e-mail activity for individual users, Exchange servers, departments or other entities can be tracked for later analysis. The system can link e-mails and attachments to content stored on other systems in an organization, providing a more thorough view into how corporate content is managed.

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Estorian is a start-up company in the Seattle area that has developed an interesting messaging archiving technology. I was given a demonstration of their technology a few weeks ago and was quite impressed.

Estorian’s Looking Glass offering is, at its core, an archiving technology. The system is designed to intercept electronic communication content, index it and store it in a database for future access, such as for e-discovery or regulatory compliance. Looking Glass is equipped with powerful search tools that will allow users to search for content using keywords, phrases, discussion threads and the like. The system includes single instance storage capabilities that can significantly reduce storage requirements, a quite serious problem according to many Osterman Research surveys conducted over the past several years.

However, Looking Glass is also designed as a policy management tool that can provide a number of other capabilities. For example, the system can track messages sent to or from an organization by IP address or domain. It can automatically notify decision makers when it detects violations of corporate policy or suspicious activity, such as e-mails that are sent to specific domains or that contain certain types of intellectual property. Statistics of e-mail activity for individual users, Exchange servers, departments or other entities can be tracked for later analysis. The system can link e-mails and attachments to content stored on other systems in an organization, providing a more thorough view into how corporate content is managed.

Although Looking Glass is designed for Exchange environments, it does not use Exchange Journaling and will potentially be extended to other messaging environments at some point. The system can be deployed via both a hosted and on-premise model, and pricing per user is very inexpensive.

Although Estorian is a start-up with little track record thus far, Looking Glass is definitely worthy of a serious look.

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