Lava Systems Africa, an affinity partner of Canadian-based Open Text, and one of the companies within the Enterprise Content & Wireless (ECW) Group, today announced that analyst firm Forrester Research has named Open Text a leader in The Forrester Wave: Records Management, Q1 2007, published on 14 March 2007 and authored by Barry Murphy with Connie Moore.
The company's Livelink ECM - Records Management solution was one of only three solutions to be named a leader of the 12 solutions included in the study.
Forrester's report takes an in-depth look at records management solutions and discusses trends that are driving the need for records management (RM) in business.
According to the report: "More stringent government regulations, more explicit Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and more reliance on information as an organisational asset highlight the critical need to manage the full life cycle of information. RM software has emerged as the lynchpin of compliance solutions, capable of applying policies to electronic and paper-based information that govern the length of retention, the accessibility, and the manner of destruction."
In a summary of Open Text's solution, the study states: "Open Text Livelink ECM - Records Management is a leader in the records management (RM) market because it provides a framework for federated RM, flexible user interface options, and strong retention management capabilities." The summary went to say: "The product can abstract RM functions - like real-time tracking management and image/scanning - into the tools that businesspeople commonly use, such as Microsoft Office. It has an especially good integration to MS SharePoint - one that not only abstracts RM functions into the SharePoint interface, but also provides an archive backend so that content from SharePoint sites can be archived and managed as records from one system."
"When we look out over the market, it's clear that Open Text is a leading enterprise content management vendor not only by size, but also by the breadth and capabilities of its compliance offerings, and its subject matter and domain expertise in the implementation of records management, compliance and litigation initiatives," commented Kirk Roberts, Executive Vice-President, Products, Solutions and Marketing at Open Text. "We are glad to see this high level of recognition in Forrester's analysis, as we continue to extend our records management and compliance offerings to build solutions that address the needs of Global 2000 organisations and government entities around the world."
Roberts points out that Open Text is continuing its role as a leader in enterprise records management through its new Enterprise Library Services, first introduced in November as part of Livelink ECM 10, the latest version of the company's ECM suite.
Enterprise Library Services integrate enterprise records management, archiving, metadata management and search capabilities, providing organisations with the ability to effectively implement retention strategies enterprise-wide, spanning multiple content stores. Customers can manage the metadata and lifecycle of content stored in enterprise applications such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and Open Text's Livelink ECM, as well as content stored in e-mail, file systems and other repositories.
Also included in the study was Open Text's Livelink ECM - eDOCS solution for records management, formerly a Hummingbird solution before Open Text's acquisition of Hummingbird in October 2006. The Livelink ECM - eDOCS solution was positioned as one of four "Strong Performers".
Continued records management recognition
Open Text's Livelink ECM - Records Management has also recently received a "Strong Positive" rating in Gartner's 30 January 2007 "MarketScope for Records Management, 2007" report authored by research vice-president, Kenneth Chin. Open Text's Strong Positive rating was the highest possible rating in the report, which covered solutions from 11 software companies.
Open Text is a worldwide leader in records management, offering solutions that allow organisations to apply records management policies to content in multiple systems. The solutions can be integrated with Open Text's content archiving and search capabilities to provide comprehensive, compliance-driven retention and disposition rules to content across the enterprise, and to support legal discovery.
Livelink ECM - Records Management and Livelink ECM - eDOCS RM are both certified for the US Department of Defence's 5015.2, Chapter 2 and Chapter 4, the United Kingdom's TNA regulations and Australia's VERS regulations - all key certifications required for records management solutions in each market.
Livelink ECM - Records Management also has certified integrations with SAP solutions and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 and 2007. Open Text was the first to receive records management certification with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 under the US Department of Defence 5015.2 certification programme.
For further information, please contact Ray Dalgarno, Lava Systems Africa: telephone (011) 675 7193, fax (011) 675 4075, e-mail rayd@lavasystems.co.za.
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ECW is the merged entity of Lava Systems Africa and Lava Systems Mobile (LSM).
The Lava Systems Africa (LSA) team originated in the late 1990s with the objective of becoming a premier supplier of enterprise systems based around knowledge management, document management, records management, image management, collaboration and workflow solutions. The emerging demands that were identified included government process re-engineering, supply chain co-ordination, customer relationship management, e-government and B2B processing. In support of these business aims, the technology platforms chosen had to enjoy a proven global track record and adhere to open Internet architecture standards and developments. LSA is a South African-based company dedicated to the sales, marketing, support and consultancy founded upon the Livelink product suite from Open Text, a product that the staff have been involved with since 1998. LSA's user base embraces customers from both the private and public sector and includes organisations such as Bateman Projects Limited, Alexander Forbes, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the National Social Security Fund of Uganda. Lava Systems Mobile, a company focusing on the development of mobile applications and tools, was originally created in 2005 and later that year absorbed KeyTools, a well-established mobile applications software developer with international links.
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