Johannesburg, 15 Mar 2004
Enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider, IXOS Software, has unveiled its commitment to deliver a complete set of regulatory compliance solutions that will address the most relevant requirements of corporate governance regulations. IXOS solutions are available in SA through IT infrastructure and solutions provider, Datacentrix.
The company`s initial solution offering, the IXOS e-mail Compliance Solution for SEC 17a-4, is built for the securities industry and aimed specifically at dealer brokers. The solution is designed to help companies comply with specific regulatory requirements focused on the use and retention of e-mail.
This scalable solution will help businesses properly manage, search and retain e-mails that have real business, legal and compliance implications, while controlling the costs associated with e-mail management.
"Compliance with rules and regulations for the review, retention and retrieval of electronic communications is a must," says Rob Shaw, product marketing manager at Datacentrix. "As e-mail continues to grow as a primary business tool, the management of it has vaulted from an IT concern to a board-room discussion.
"The IXOS solution enables companies to address the most stringent regulatory requirements while decreasing the cost and effort of e-mail management. Within SA, the new acts that need to be complied with are the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA), the Financial Intelligence Act (FICA) and the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act.
"Now with the global trading of many local companies, the requirements from international regulatory bodies also need to be addressed; these include the SEC-17a-4, Sarbarnes-Oxley and Basel II regulations," he says. Estimated by AMR Research to be a $2.5 billion market this year in the US alone, corporate governance and compliance issues continue to rapidly gather momentum worldwide.
At the centre of the IXOS e-mail Compliance Solution is the IXOS-eCONserver, a single content repository for e-mail and document management that serves as the common foundation and core of all IXOS` ECM offerings. This scalable production-class server delivers secure document archiving, user authentication and document distribution and can manage millions of documents in a live system.
Solutions packages designed for specific compliance issues will plug directly into the IXOS-eCONserver backbone. This modular approach positions IXOS to rapidly and effectively address a multitude of ECM and compliance solutions to meet evolving market needs. Customers will quickly be in line with business and regulatory requirements by simply adding IXOS solutions packages that seamlessly integrate with the core IXOS repository.
This announcement of IXOS` first solution to address e-mail compliance and regulatory requirements coincides with the new product release of eCONserver for Microsoft Exchange version 2, the first e-mail management solution to support Microsoft Exchange 2003.
The solution archives all data securely and unalterably for specified periods on optical media or specific storage hardware. It also easily enables companies to discover and retrieve specific messages in case of an audit, as well as dispose of documents in accordance with best practices.
In line with this, the company also recently announced extended functionality of its Lotus Notes solutions to help enterprises more effectively handle business-critical communication. The upgraded solutions for the Lotus platform continue to provide seamless integration with Lotus Notes 5 and 6, while adding compliance capabilities to ensure reliable archiving of digital messages, improve organisational performance and minimise the risks associated with regulatory requirements.
Says Shaw: "Organisations that practice poor document and records management procedures face devastating risks including litigation, costly and time-consuming discovery and potential liability for lost information or information that cannot be validated as unaltered from its original state.
"In fact, recent reports from Kahn Consulting and Cohasset Associates reveal the cost of discovery to be in excess of $1million and the largest uncontrolled cost in business today."
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