Total Tec Offers SMBs Out-Of-The-Box Compliance

Total Tec Systems Inc.s TrustWorthy Appliance helps small and midsize businesses achieve messaging and regulatory compliance.

Click here to read the full review of the TrustWorthy Appliance.

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Total Tec Systems Inc.s TrustWorthy Appliance helps small and midsize businesses achieve messaging and regulatory compliance.

The TrustWorthy Appliance, released earlier this month, is a turnkey solution that comes with all the hardware and software IT managers need to archive and monitor employee messages.

The product is built on Veritas Software Corp.s Enterprise Vault software, which not only facilitates migration of e-mail from the Microsoft Corp. Exchange data store but also provides discovery tools to quickly search through messages.

The TrustWorthy Appliance is targeted primarily at SMBs running Exchange. Instant messages and file servers can also be archived using the TrustWorthy Appliance, but this solution is geared for Microsoft shops and supports no other e-mail server.

Veritas Enterprise Vault 6.0, slated to ship next month, will offer the ability to archive IBMs Lotus Domino servers. With this capability, its conceivable that Total Tec Systems will be able to create an archive solution for this mail platform, but for now the TrustWorthy Appliance is limited to Exchange.

The TrustWorthy Appliance, which starts at $14,995, runs on a Hewlett-Packard Co. server that uses dual Intel Corp. 3.2GHz Xeon processors and has 2GB of RAM and 250GB of storage capacity running in RAID 5. As storage needs increase, external storage units can be added to expand capacity up to 12TB.

The TrustWorthy Appliance comes in three models. The TrustWorthy Mailbox Appliance is the entry-level member of the trio and provides basic e-mail archiving but has no WORM storage, making it inadequate for companies trying to achieve compliance.

/zimages/4/28571.gifeWEEK Technology Editor Peter Coffee says application development and deployment must be tighter to limit compliance costs.Click hereto read his column.

The more powerful $24,995 TrustWorthy Sarbanes Oxley/HIPAA/FDA Appliance includes Veritas Discovery Accelerator module, and the high-end $27,995 TrustWorthy Financial Services Appliance includes Veritas Compliance Accelerator module. (We tested a specially designed appliance loaded with both software modules.)

The higher-end appliances come with a Sony Corp. AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) autoloader that provides 3.2TB of WORM storage. The removable WORM storage is a key requirement for the Securities and Exchange Commissions Rule 17a-4 and other regulations that require data protection and guaranteed retention.

On all TrustWorthy appliances, the e-mail archive process is seamless to users. As messages enter and leave the Exchange server, the appliance can archive them into its own searchable mail store. Shortcuts allow clients to quickly retrieve older messages that are stored on the archive.

Moving e-mail messages off the Exchange server has another advantage: The mail server is then free to concentrate on its primary functions—accepting and sending messages—while the task of retrieving and searching through older messages and attachments is delegated to the TrustWorthy Appliance.

This handy feature keeps the Exchange servers lean and makes them easier to restore if a system failure occurs, since IT staffs need focus only on rebuilding the server while most attachments and messages are held in the archive.

The basic Search Vault functionality, found on all three editions of the appliance, allowed us to search for keywords in archived messages.

The Discovery Accelerator module found on the TrustWorthy Sarbanes Oxley/HIPAA/FDA Appliance could be useful to auditors and legal teams trying to gather data for a case. The TrustWorthy Financial Services Appliances Compliance Accelerator module is a powerful tool for supervising sensitive e-mail accounts. Whereas Discovery Accelerator is good for keeping track of all the content in an e-mail archive, Compliance Accelerator allows reviewers to easily look through mail when necessary to meet SEC 17a-4 and National Association of Securities Dealers 3010 and 3110 e-mail retention and compliance requirements.

Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.

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Evaluation Shortlist

iLumin Software Services Inc.s Assentor Compliance Enterprise Suite A powerful solution geared to monitoring e-mail (www.ilumin.com)

Storage Technology Corp.s Lifecycle Fixed Content Manager 100 An ILM appliance for midsize and large companies scaling from 2TB to 18TB (www.storagetek.com)

Senior Analyst Henry Baltazar can be reached at henry_baltazar@ziffdavis.com.

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