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 Open Text`s major expansion of its already broad suite of e-mail management solutions, with new compliance features that will help customers meet tough e-mail regulations in industries, such as financial services, as well as address internal requirements for e-mail monitoring.
The new capabilities include sophisticated tools for capturing samples of inbound and outbound e-mails from massive volumes of daily messages, administering review processes and managing audits for regulators. Open Text is offering the new features as part of Livelink ECM - E-mail Monitoring, one of two solution sets Open Text offers for managing e-mail in Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.
E-mail mandates from government agencies, such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), are a key target for the new offerings. The SEC requires financial services companies to extract samples of dealer-broker correspondence for review, and maintain the samples for several years in the event of an audit. Open Text`s solution helps customers capture e-mail from dealer-broker accounts in a secure archive and periodically gather a sample of those e-mails in an auditing workflow.
Customers can also use the solution for internal purposes to automate managers` reviews of employee e-mails. For example, on a scheduled basis, the solution can capture outbound e-mails on sales quotes to help ensure adherence to internal policies or to measure performance.
"The risks of e-mail and its overwhelming volume are among the biggest concerns for our customers," commented Mark Portu, Vice-President of Compliance Solutions at Open Text. "These new compliance capabilities are an important extension of our e-mail management suite. We`re giving customers comprehensive solutions they can apply to a broad range of requirements, including government regulations, litigation e-discovery and internal policy mandates."
According to a 2005 report by Forrester Research`s Barry Murphy: "Records management (RM), message archiving, and electronic discovery solutions help enterprises follow best-effort processes for storing and archiving enterprise content in case the content is needed later for legal or regulatory purposes. These tools let companies `know what they know,` ie, if a major executive has been sending e-mails about upcoming merger activities. It is only with this knowledge that companies can set informed legal strategies when compliance issues arise or when faced with litigation."
Among the new features are a variety of options for gathering samples of e-mails. Customers can schedule one-time or recurring reviews; specify the amount of content to gather; and define specific search criteria, including inclusive or exclusive keywords, users, dates, domains and record classifications. Comprehensive auditing capabilities help customers demonstrate successful audits to regulators through detailed audit logs. The solution also offers a dedicated workspace for administrators, reviewers and auditors, where they can maintain e-mail messages, coordinate review processes, and manage escalations of questionable or objectionable content.
Open Text`s e-mail management solutions fall under two solution sets:
* Livelink ECM - E-mail Management includes basic archiving, as well as more sophisticated capabilities for managing e-mail as corporate records. This solution gives customers a feature-rich records management system for e-mail, combining retention and disposition policies, full-text search, fully automated and interactive classification, retention management, preservation and auditing.
* Livelink ECM - E-mail Monitoring offers robust search and e-discovery across the entire chain of e-mail communication in an organisation, in addition to the newly introduced sampling and review capabilities for inbound and outbound e-mails. The solution is powered by the same records management technology, providing features that help automate retention and disposition policies, automated classification, preservation and auditing.
Open Text`s solutions work with major storage systems, including those from Hitachi Data Systems, Network Appliance, EMC, HP, Sun Microsystems and IBM.
For further information, please contact Ray Dalgarno, Lava Systems Africa: telephone 011 675-3704, fax 011 675-1021, e-mail rayd@lavasystems.co.za
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ECW is the merged entity of Lava Systems Africa and Real Global Business Solutions (RGBS).
Lava Systems Africa
The Lava Systems Africa (Pty) Ltd (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.
Lava Systems Africa is a South African-based BEE 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.
Lava Systems Africa 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. Additionally, Lava Systems Mobile was created earlier this year and KeyTools, a well-established mobile applications software developer with international links, was also acquired by LSA.
Real Global Business Solutions
Real Global Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd (RGBS) is a South African 100% black-owned company specialising in the sales, marketing and implementation of enterprise wide information delivery solutions including both operational and analytical CRM and e-business solutions. The company`s major market focus is the government and public enterprises, as well as the middle-sized ERP markets. Its organisation markets packaged and customisable business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services. To this end, RGBS has entered into strategic partnership agreements with global, leading and reputable software vendors such as Microsoft and SAS.
RGBS customers include the Department of Social Development, Eskom Distribution, First National Bank, Royal Swazi Sugar, SA Weather Services and SITA.
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