Sun addresses governance requirements with Compliance and Content Management Solution

Sun Microsystems has announced the Sun Compliance and Content Management Solution, a customer-ready system that integrates Sun's storage and compliance products, the expertise of its client solutions organisation, and the Solaris Operating System with compliance software from AXS-One to deliver a cost-effective compliance solution for electronic records.

This collaboration between Sun and AXS-One helps customers address the growing tide of global regulatory compliance and business governance requirements such as FICA (Financial Intelligence Centre Act), AIA (Availability of Information Act), ECT (Electronic Communications and Transactions Act) and Basel.

The announcement extends Sun's existing content and compliance offerings that include the Sun Content Infrastructure System powered by Sun StorEdge SAM-FS, the Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving System and its Content and Compliance Client Solutions Practice. Through integration with the AXS-One Compliance Platform, customers now have a single platform for the management of all corporate electronic records including e-mail and instant messages.

This solution helps customers address compliance requirements more quickly while mitigating the risks often associated with new implementations. Additional operational efficiencies are achieved with the delivery of a common repository for all compliance information, convenient access to information assets, broad scalability and enhanced security.

In the past few months, complying with government regulations has become a top priority for organisations around the world, says Jan Dry, Sector Manager for Public Sector and Financial Services at Sun Microsystems for sub-Saharan Africa region.

"Our customers have a critical need to get more out of their information assets and intellectual property while ensuring compliance with the regulations that affect them. This solution delivers authentication of and access to corporate information while ensuring maximum security anywhere, anytime and this translates into a real-time business advantage for our customers," he adds.

According to a December 2004 AMR Research alert by John Hagerty, public companies are projected to spend $6 billion in 2005 to become Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. A study published in the same month by IT market research and advisory firm IDC states that e-mail archiving applications revenue is expected to top $180 million worldwide in 2004, up from just $33 million two years ago and to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 50% through 2008.

Gartner is tracking the vendors in what they call the e-mail active-archiving market and believes the products in this category need to include archiving, indexing, hierarchical storage management (HSM) and basic records retention management, as well as special applications for meeting the needs of compliance officers and those tasked with producing records for legal discovery requests.

Carolyn DiCenzo, vice-president of research in storage management and e-mail archiving software for Gartner, states that leading solutions in this space bring together all of these components to address the retention requirements around e-mail while providing the opportunity to more efficiently and cost-effectively manage the impact of growing e-mail data stores.

"By leveraging AXS-One's Compliance Platform, Sun is uniquely positioned in this growing market as the only company to provide customers with a complete and customisable compliance solution that offers a number of key components," says Helen Constantinides, Practice Lead: Datacentre and Storage at Sun Microsystems for sub-Saharan Africa region.

"These components include the Solaris 10 Operating System, which is optimised for storage, and Sun StorEdge SAM-FS file system software. A single Web-based search screen for all records and a heterogeneous platform ensures interoperability with all classes of data/records including e-mail, messaging, documents, databases, ERP, images," she adds.

Sun and AXS-One recently completed a full-scale joint testing project to verify the scalability of the Sun Compliance and Content Management Solution as well as to establish implementation and best practice recommendations for customers. The results showed that the solution successfully scales to meet the requirements of large global corporations. This has been achieved as a result of optimisation and integration of the component parts to ensure full interoperability and maximised performance.

The solution offers different storage infrastructure options in order to address each customer's unique compliance requirements. The options include the Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving System for non-eraseable, non-rewriteable "WORM" disk capabilities, extendable per file retention periods and advanced security; and the Sun Content Infrastructure System for automated tiered archiving and other infrastructure components that may be required. Sun leverages the expertise of its Content and Compliance Client Solutions Practice to ensure speedy delivery of the optimal solution.

Sun and AXS-One are collaborating to incorporate capabilities that will supersede Sun's current e-mail archiving solution, Infinite Mailbox. The Sun Compliance and Content Management Solution will replace Infinite Mailbox and seamlessly provide existing and future customers with a single, scalable framework that can archive and manage all electronic records, including e-mail, while addressing storage, compliance and content management challenges.

"AXS-One is delighted that Sun has chosen to extend our business and technology relationship, said Jerry Vendome, executive vice-president of business development at AXS-One. "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a global leader in technology. Our teams have closely collaborated to optimise our technology for the Sun Solaris platform and the testing results demonstrate the proven scalability of Sun systems and the solution," he concludes.

The Sun Compliance and Content Management Solution is available worldwide. The solution is sold, serviced and supported by Sun. For more information on the Sun Compliance and Content Management Solution, visit www.sun.com/service/businesscompliance/c2ms.

* Source: IDC, Worldwide E-mail Archiving Applications 2004-2008 Forecast and 2003 Vendor Shares: To Be Dedicated Solutions or Not to Be That Is the Question for the Forecast Scenarios, IDC #32639, December 2004.

** Source: Gartner, Vendors Respond to New E-Mail Active-Archiving Market Requirements, Carolyn DiCenzo and David Mario Smith, ID #HARD-WW-DP-0591 26 November 2003.