Microsoft Corp. announced plans for Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), a technology for Windows Server 2003 that will give organizations advanced ways to help secure sensitive internal business information including financial reports and confidential planning documents. Windows Rights Management Services will work with applications to provide a platform-based approach to providing persistent policy rights for Web content and sensitive corporate documents of all types. Beta code for Windows Rights Management Services will be broadly available in the second quarter of 2003. Using Windows Rights Management Services, applications such as information portals, word processors or e-mail clients can be built so that users will be able to easily designate both who can have access to specific content and what kinds of access rights they can have. Rights and policy are managed by the server, while clients running RMS-enabled applications allow users to apply rights with a click of a button. In addition, enterprises can enforce policy broadly and reliably by centrally delivering templates that automate the process for example, making the policy around what constitutes “company confidential” uniform and easy to manage. Because Windows Rights Management Services technology is an ASP.NET Web service built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, it can interoperate with business processes via Web services. RMS technology uses XrML (Extensible Rights Markup Language). Microsoft will release two software development kits in the second quarter of 2003. www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/rm