Back in the bad old days, when you sent an email somewhere containing some vital, time sensitive information, you just assumed that it got there, and that it would not 'conveniently' get lost or delayed somewhere along the line.
Yes, you laugh, but it's true.
When you sent a registered or notarized letter through either the mail or a courier service, you only certified the damn envelope, and not what was in it. Back in the day, you could send someone a contract to sign, and they could send it back to you with a crucial page missing, and claim that that page in question was not included in the original document. And then you might find yourself in a good old-fashioned mess.
For you, that day might have been today. But, at the risk of sounding like a corny advert, maybe tomorrow will be different.
Because now you are going to learn all about Globalpex, which has been building a range of content certification and content management services since its inception in 2005, and which is now going live with three communication certification services:
- Content Certified Physical Mail
- Content Certified Email
- Content Certified IM (still in Beta)
All three services provide proof of content for these diverse modes of communication, and the physical mail certification process, in particular, is nothing short of revolutionary. Certification services are based on a pay-as-you-go model, and are managed via the company's new browser-based Centralized Mail and Messaging Console (CMMC).
In a nutshell, here's what the company provide:
- Certified content of email, physical mail, and IM
- Retention of records, eDiscovery and real time visibility of records
- Cost savings on mail — international mail sent from inside US at national rates
But there's more to Globalpex than just that (just that?). This cock-sure Florida company is not short of ideas. It has an array of other pretty sweet capabilities which are either currently live or in the pipeline, across the whole range of content management, records management, records retention, ERP and Enterprise CMS integration… the list goes on. If it's to do with content, with correspondence, with documents and communication, these guys are interested.
Your CMSWire correspondent here had the pleasure of speaking to CEO Ed Zakarian, Marc Miller (VP Sales & Marketing),and Serge Hairanian the CTO. To get the full Globalpex picture, read on my friend, read on.
Globalpex Origins
CMSWire: Let's start at the beginning. Who are you and why should the CM world care?
Marc Miller: We were founded in 2005 and we focus on content certification. This is kind of a new area which hasn't been really been developed in the past. It really started with physical mail . Traditionally if you had a really important document that you wanted to send to someone, especially in the US, there were a number of options that you could utilize to protect it.
You could go to a notary who would notarize the signature and confirm that you were who you say you were, you could go to the US Postal service and they would confirm that an envelope had been mailed, and if it was an urgent matter you could send it with FedEX, DHL etc., and get that expedited with a delivery receipt, in the form of a signature.
So you could prove that you are who you say you are, you could prove that you sent an envelope, and you could prove that that envelope was actually received by someone. But you couldn't prove what was actually in the envelope.
And that's the gap that Globalpex was set up to fill. That was the reason for founding the company.
CMSWire: And so you moved on from physical mail into the digital arena?
MM: Right. We started with physical mail, and then extended that concept to email and instant messaging as well. So that you could protect those documents and those correspondence too. And with all the regulatory changes that have occurred over the past several years, that's become increasingly important, with regard to numerous types of documents: legal documents, health records, sensitive financial data.
All along we were really trying to make sure that ease of use was of paramount importance, and so by making it a web-based SaaS offering, we're trying to make it as easy to use as possible, and to enable as many people to use it as possible. Wherever you are in the globe, whatever kind of organization you are working in, of whatever scale — our service has the capability to provide certification to your communications.
Certification of Digital Assets
CMSWire: All very well, but how does it work? How can you certify what was or is in an IM or in an email?
MM: With an IM or an email, it's actually pretty simple for us. What we do with an email is essentially this: the sender of the email can go on to our system through the Central Mail and Messaging Console, which is a web-based portal, and you go ahead and type the content of that email. You then go ahead and send it to whomever you want to receive it.
Once you send it, the email is residing on our HQ location, and we also have redundancies which I'll get onto later [your correspondent never gave Miller the chance to 'get into it later', as by then his dinner was getting cold and his missus was beginning to pout].
The recipient then gets notification that a certified email is waiting for them. They click on that link, to the unalterable copy of the email which is sitting on our server. By accessing that, we have a time and date stamp and we can show not only who they are, and what IP address they are viewing this from but also in fact how many times they viewed it.
CMSWire: One of these days a lawyer is going to knock on your door, and say, for instance that 'My client never actually viewed this”, or wrote it, or similar. How can you prove that you didn't alter it? Just because a third-party company claims that they didn't alter a message or details regarding it, how can you prove that?
MM:There are a variety of mechanisms, from the encryption of the line, to the login process by which a person who establishes a unique account, and other mechanisms.
At the end of the day, if a person wants to be duplicitous and engage in fraudulent activities, they're probably going to find a way to do that.
What our services do is make it much more difficult for them to do that. And it gives you that added protection to say that a 3rd party has certified that this what was received by us, and we can prove with pretty good certainty that that what was put on our server, for instance. Without any interaction with Globalpex itself necessary.
CMSWire: Who do you envisage as your main customers for these services?
MM: Initially, mostly the SMB market. We are working with a larger enterprise, and that's also been very successful. But we are initially focused on SMBs, who may not have the sophisticated ECM, or ERP systems, and are looking for something that will provide them with an additional way — a better way — to store and manage their critical communications.
And we offer a retention tree that 's completely customizable, but if you are a small or medium business that doesn't have a compliance officer, that doesn't have a legal department, it gives you a baseline and a place to start in holding on to those communications that are important to you.
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