Real-time communications capability is a distinct competitive advantage for any enterprise. For employees 'Presence Information' about their contacts, makes these communications targeted, efficient, cost effective, and secured. Consequently, IM has become a core competency in which enterprises are willing to invest.

However, major irregualrities involving prominent companies have come to light, many through leaks of archived emails and other business records. Various Governments and regulatory bodies are enforcing use of archiving of communications, business records and documents, and management controls and audits of business conduct.

"In Civilized life, law floats in  a sea of ethics."

Earl Warren 1891-1974

American Chief Justice

Several regulations have been enacted recently to strengthen ethical business practices, corporate governance and restore investor confidence,  as follows. These regulations require "Archiving and WORM’ing" of all communications (including instant messaging) regarding business activity.
  -For financial industry: SEC regulations 17a-4, NASD 3010, NYSE
  -For pharmaceuticals/healthcare: (HIPAA),
  -other regulations for Petrochemical, Oil and Energy industries.
  -Sarbanes-Oxley Act

A set of new rules, that have taken effect from Dec 1, 2006, require U.S. companies to keep better track of their employees' e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents in the event the companies are sued, as per some legal experts. They are part of amendments to federal rules governing civil litigation and were approved by the Supreme Court's administrative arm in April 2006 after a five-year review.

More on Self Regulation and Compliance...

Microsoft Office Live Communications Servers 2003 and 2005 offer both instant messaging capability and presence information. However, both of these, and even Exchange 2000 IM lack "out-of-the-box" functionality and do not provide a GUI, for monitoring and reporting of 'IM Activity' or 'Presence Statistics'. Monitoring of instant messaging activity is recommended for every IM deployments. Cordant's IMScribe®, IMConsole 2003/ 2005 assist in such monitoring, generate rich reports and statistics and help an enterprise to improve ROI in its real-time communications technology.

Cordant’s customers include several Fortune 500 companies and other SMBs in diverse sectors such as pharmaceutical, insurance, financial services, medical services and research. 

For further reading on this subject go to ...

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Office Communications Server 2007: 

Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 has been relased recently and is Microsoft's  first product to combine enterprise-ready IM (instant messaging), presence, conferencing, and VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony in a fully integrated unified communications solution. Office Communications Server 2007 provides richer presence capabilities, enhanced support for group IM, and improved deployment and management than its predecessor, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 SP1. 

Besides features such as federation and public IM connectivity, Office Communications Server 2007also includes real-time conferencing hosted on servers inside your organization’s firewall and a full-featured, software-powered VoIP solution that can stand on its own or integrate easily with an existing PBX infrastructure.

ENTERPRISE OCS CUSTOMERS

Through our comprehensive partnership with Unify Square, Inc. our team can help your enterprise plan, architect and deploy OCS with confidence, in the context of your own unique business needs and IT architecture.  Find out how we can help you with:

• Strategy
• Architecture
• Deployment
• Interoperability

For further details about any of Cordant's Products or services please contact us via e-mail sales@cordant.com, or at toll free phone: 1-866-354-1925.

 IM in the Mainstream

Oil-Supply Data Probed for Manipulation,  CFTC Regulators Look at Energy Firms, Take Depositions About Oddball Trading

By ANN DAVIS, Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2008; 

Commodity-market regulators are investigating whether energy-market players are injecting false data into the marketplace to influence perceptions about crude-oil supply and demand, people familiar with the probe say..

Did Traders Almost Have to Stop Sending Instant Messages?

Blog By:  Ben Worthen, July 29, 2008, 8:58 pm  

Wall Street traders faced the prospect of needing to stop using Thomson Reuters’s instant messaging-program this coming Friday. The problem: A misunderstanding over a software contract that ended up in a lawsuit… 

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1.      What’s really killing the land-line business?

By Slate.com; 7/30/2008. 

The days when a cell phone was a luxury are gone. Today, it's

 the home-based telephone that's as expendable as Starbucks lattes and Coach handbags.

It's not exactly insightful to point out that young people don't feel the need to have old-fashioned telephones, the kind that are tethered to a house via a wire and provided by a descendant of the original… 

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Working And Health: Allocating time:

A teenager today is three times more likely to send an "instant" message

December 2,  Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board

We live at frenetic speed. We're on 24/7. Global is the new local. A teenager today is three times more likely to send an "instant" message than an e-mail. Is this pace killing …?

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IM in Humor

Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2007

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Bill Gates Showcases Integrated Communications Vision and Unveils New Microsoft Office Real-Time Collaboration Offerings

Microsoft PressPass, March 08, 2005

Security Watch

The Surveillance Law That Matters

By Robert F. Turner, Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2007

I have never met Judge Michael Mukasey, and I have no strong

feelings on who should be our next attorney general. But after four decades studying and writing about national security aspects of our Constitution, I believe Congress and the American...

Five Years after the End Of the World- Worst Case Planning is rarely Warranted

Larry Seltzer, eSeminars, Feb 16 2005.

"Threats, and hype, are always going to be with us. If you follow the normal security measures—a firewall, virus protection, antispyware, and regular updates—you can take advantage of all the Internet has to offer without putting yourself at risk" 
Read full article...

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Ethics

SEC Opens Early Inquiry Into UAL Glitch

By KARA SCANNELL, Wall Street Journal,  September 12, 2008; 

The Securities and Exchange Commission opened a preliminary inquiry into the circumstances around UAL Corp.'s stock drop, according to people familiar with the matter...

Tough market appears to be ripe for fraud

By Kenneth R. Harney, Syndicated Columnist, Aug 30 2008.

WASHINGTON — You might assume that with home purchases and new mortgage volume off by 30 percent or more in many markets during the past year, loan fraud would be down as well.

Wrong. A benchmark quarterly study released Aug. 25 by the mortgage industry's principal compiler of fraud reports, the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), found that the number of cases jumped by 42 percent between the second quarter of 2007 and the same period this year…

Citi Talks With Regulators May Bring Billions in Buybacks

By AMIR EFRATI and LIZ RAPPAPORT, Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2008

Citigroup Inc. is in negotiations with state and federal regulators to resolve allegations of wrongdoing in the auction-rate-securities market that could result in its buying back several billion dollars of the illiquid securities from investors and paying a sizable fine, according to people familiar with the matter…

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Drugstore Tobacco Sales Under Fire

San Francisco Vote To Tackle Cigarettes At Health

 Retailers

By ANN ZIMMERMAN; July 29, 2008;  Wall Street Journal

Antismoking advocates are taking the battle against cigarettes to the aisles of pharmacies as well as retailers with in-store health clinics, arguing that stores promoting health care shouldn't also be selling tobacco products…