Workshare introduced their next generation of document lifecycle compliance technology for corporations, professional services firms and the public sector. Workshare Professional Release 4 (WP4) works in-line with Microsoft Office and safely controls the flow and auditability of document events inside and outside the perimeter across email servers, portals and repositories. WP4 introduces 97 new features including: Always On Audit, Dynamic Document States, Secure Conditioning, Email Synchronization, Policy-based Security, Report Wizard, One-click PDF conversion, DeltaView Accept and Reject, Delegate Authorization, Microsoft SharePoint Integration, Documentum Integration, and Expanded Standards Support. WP4 is available in three editions: WP4 for Outlook, WP4 for Notes and WP4 for GroupWise. All are US $349 per seat for a perpetual license with volume discounts. Term licensing is also available. Supported integration options include Microsoft SharePoint, Interwoven, Hummingbird and Documentum. WP4 for Outlook, with Interwoven and Hummingbird options, is available immediately. WP4 for Notes and WP4 for GroupWise will be released in March 2005. All remaining integration options will be available in March 2005. All Workshare 3 customers on a current software service subscription will receive Workshare Professional at no additional charge. www.workshare.com
Month: February 2005 (Page 7 of 8)
eCopy, Inc. announced the eCopy Connections Alliance Program (eCAP). The Program enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create software integration between their enterprise applications and eCopy’s document scanning services operating on a range of multifunction peripherals (MFPs) and scanners. eCopy’s software, coupled with a scanner or digital copier, enables organizations to transform paper documents into electronic documents. Using eCopy, organizations can provide open access to scanning that connects to enterprise applications, such as document management, e-mail, and fax. eCAP is part of an eCopy program called The Paper Connection, which is designed to make it easy for any office worker to integrate paper-based information into enterprise applications, such as enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and e-mail. The Paper Connection complements information lifecycle management (ILM) and addresses the challenge of distributing, managing, accessing, and protecting paper-based information. Connectors that provide integration to the eCopy Open Platform are currently available for ECM applications from EMC, Interwoven, Hummingbird, and Open Text. www.ecopy.com
Quark Inc. announced a strategic alliance with DeskNet Inc., a provider of enterprise customer communications software to financial services organizations. This new partnership enables organizations with regulatory obligations, such as financial services, to deploy a single platform that supports the on-going convergence of compliance requirements with marketing’s strategic objectives. This platform automates the creation and distribution of all transactional, sales, marketing and educational materials on demand. By adding Quark Dynamic Document Server to DeskNet’s ContentWelder platform, the solution will furnish customers with the ability to leverage the QuarkXPress design community while ensuring centralized business, branding and compliance logic. Additionally, the distributed layout and tagging of complex documents is easily validated with immediate testing available through the centralized platform, a feature for global companies that market locally yet must comply with broad branding and compliance guidelines. www.desknetinc.com, www.quark.com
Ingenta and Infotrieve, Inc. announced an expanded partnership that will enable Ingenta-hosted content to be indexed by Infotrieve’s full-text crawler. This relationship will enable Infotrieve to provide full-text article searches via its discovery research portals, increasing the depth of discovery resources for Infotrieve customers and generating additional document delivery traffic for Ingenta-hosted publishers. www.ingenta.com
Hummingbird Ltd. announced the unveiling of Hummingbird Enterprise 2005, the next generation of its enterprise content management platform. Leveraging the new capabilities of Hummingbird Enterprise 2005, Microsoft Outlook users will be able to manage and organize e-mail, documents, physical records, reports, workflows and more, all from within Outlook. The customizable business views expose all the capabilities of Hummingbird Enterprise including content management, records management, collaboration, workflow, search, and reporting from within Microsoft Outlook. Hummingbird Enterprise 2005 also includes a brand new desktop search capability, and an enhanced hierarchical security model and enhanced security of metadata with DoD 5015.2 certification including the Chapter 4 requirements. In addition, the integrations of Business Intelligence reporting and Data Integration capabilities provide a facility for customers to track and report on how Hummingbird Enterprise metadata and content is used. A beta program for Hummingbird Enterprise 2005 is scheduled to commence in Q1 2005. The suite is expected to be generally available this summer. www.hummingbird.com
Mobius Management Systems, Inc. and Network Appliance, Inc. announced integration of Mobius ViewDirect TCM software with NetApp NearStore disk-based nearline storage systems. The new collaboration is meant to deliver a solution that simplifies the archiving, recall, and management of content from any source, on platforms including UNIX, Windows, Linux and mainframe z/OS. The integrated solution addresses customer challenges of managing growing volumes of diverse content while satisfying the need for rapid retrieval and high availability not possible with traditional tape and optical media. Together, the Mobius ViewDirect TCM suite and NetApp NearStore offer a long-term content management and storage solution. ViewDirect TCM integrates enterprise content in a single, consolidated repository or through access to multiple, disparate repositories and includes a complete suite of content-centric applications that enable regulatory compliance and automate business processes. NearStore combines the Data ONTAP operating system with inexpensive ATA disk drives for near-primary storage performance. The solution scales from 8TB to 96TB with a single NearStore system, while multiple NearStore systems provide petabytes of storage at near-tape costs to support growing content stores. www.netapp.com, www.mobius.com
A few weeks ago Deloitte published a really useful, short whitepaper titled
"Under
Control: Sustaining Compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley in Year Two and Beyond."
(You can download the paper for free, but access requires registration.)
Recognizing that meeting first year SOX 404 compliance requirements was a
real fire drill for many companies, the paper asks the important question of how
to turn this into something that is sustainable. You should download and
read the full paper, but I will pull out a couple of observations that seemed
particularly important:
- Many companies approached their initial SOX compliance efforts as a
"project." To the extent that the project focus helped
meet the deadlines, it was a good thing. But it is also a potentially
crippling attitude that companies must consciously undo over the coming
year. Internal control and SOX compliance requirements never
end. They need to become part of daily operations, not a special
project. Facing the need to "change gears" squarely
will be important.
- The internal audit team often emerged as a central part of the
compliance "project" in year one. That made sense for the
first year, but may not be the right approach over the long
run. Without more staff and resources, continued work on SOX would
displace important internal audit work. Perhaps even more critically,
if if internal audit becomes responsible for implementing and managing
controls, they will not be in a position to provide an objective
evaluation of those same controls.
- Information technology was often not well integrated into first year
compliance efforts — the focus was on meeting the deadline, not on
building a workable, sustainable system. Many companies will find that
it is possible to make the process more efficient and sustainable by
making strategic technology investments.
The paper is a nice overview of the problems faced by companies now that
initial deadlines have been met. It is the kind of paper that I put in my
files for future reference.
Bill Gates weighs in on XML and interoperability.
