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Enterprise Instant Messaging
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In today's competitive world, enterprises
providing its employees capability to communicate
quickly and efficiently with their other team members,
suppliers, customers, or partners have a distinct
advantage. We all have increasingly busy schedules,
are dispersed in multiple geographical locations,
and find it hard to contact the right people in
absence of their 'presence', knowing instantly whether
someone is online and available to communicate,
while these communications need to be efficient,
cost effective, and secured.
Instant messaging Technology offers both the
above capabilities, messaging for communicating
in real-time and also the ‘presence’
information. With IM one can now connect with
people, get information in real-time, and make
better and faster decisions. IM enables more economic,
efficient and targeted communications and hence
is becoming increasingly popular with enterprises.
While there are many competing products in the
market, Microsoft offers a number of Instant Messaging
products which are suitable for public at-large
and for businesses. Exchange 2000 and Live Communications
Servers (LCS) 2003 and 2005 are specially developed
for business applications and are highly scalable.
The latter solutions in Live Communications family
offer secure and industry standard (SIP) based
platform with both messaging capability and presence
engine.
Cordant provides solutions for monitoring, compliance
and management of Instant Messaging application
in Enterprises based on Microsoft’s enterprise
Instant Messaging Servers, namely, Exchange 2000
and Live Communications Server 2003 and 2005.
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Regulatory Compliance
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Enterprises have to operate in
an increasingly regulatory environment because of
a number of developments, some of which are listed
below:
- Major scandals involving prominent companies
(WorldCom, Enron and others) reported.
- To strengthen ethical business practices,
corporate governance and restore investor confidence,
several regulations enacted such as:
- For financial industry: SEC regulations 17a-4,
NASD 3010, NYSE
- For pharmaceuticals/healthcare: the Health Insurance
Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA),
- other regulations for Petrochemical, Oil and
Energy industries.
- And for all US public companies: Sarbanes-
Oxley Act coming into effect on Nov 15, 2004.
- These regulations require “Archiving
and WORM’ing” of all communications
(including instant messaging) regarding business
activity for varying lengths of time.
- Companies required to develop systems and
defining and enforcing internal controls, auditing
their compliance, and periodic reporting to
regulatory bodies.
All such government and industry rules and regulations
can be lumped under the umbrella term "compliance.
The degree of impact of compliance on any, small
businesses included, really depends on the kind
of entities involved, its own and with whom they
have to deal with, like their customers, or suppliers.
Small brokerage houses, financial services firms,
etc. are expected to comply with Securities &
Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. And those
dealing with the healthcare industry could fall
under HIPAA rules. Trading companies could be
governed by the U.S. Patriot Act. Small banks
will deal with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
and anti-money-laundering regulations. One can
not assume that SMB’s do not have to comply
with federal, state, or local government regulations.
More information about such laws is available on
Internet:
http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/businesslaw/index.html
http://www.businesslaw.gov/
http://www.mercatus.org/regradar/
http://www.thecre.com/watchlist/index.html
http://www.itgi.org/
http://www.networkcomputing.com/cmpguidebook/index.html
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Self Regulation and Internal Compliance
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Industry segments that are susceptible
to litigation might have internal controls and policies
regarding records retention that are as strict or
stricter than government/industry regulations, and
the same tools that are applied to SEC and SOX regulations
can also be applicable to legal discovery. Certain
industries, regardless of company size, are more
regulated and self-regulated than others.
While Sarbanes-Oxley (and other regulations)
might not affect many small businesses directly,
it may indirectly have an impact if they are required
to change their processes to do business with
a larger company that is governed by the regulation.
Each business entity should ask its customers
or business partners what regulations they need
to comply with now or in the future. It should
examine the need to update its systems and processes
when they do.
Enterprises struggling to deal with new regulations
might be focused on their own compliance issues
without thinking about companies they do business
with. By taking the lead on compliance, you just
might save an important business relationship
down the line.
Many leading industry watchers recommend self
regulation for all entities. While it may not
be possible to eliminate an irregularity or violation
100% even with a compliance solution or system
in place, it is found that the authorities take
a lighter view of such violations errors if the
company can provide evidence that an internal
compliance system is in place to prevent them.
Cordant solutions go beyond regulatory compliance
and assist with internal compliance. |
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