Content Management Matters ™

The annual Foley & Lardner study on Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and its financial impact reveals that out-of-pocket compliance costs are continuing to climb.

This is happening despite an overall decrease in compliance costs. How is this happening? The biggest culprits are rising legal fees and audit expenses.

But while we'd like to add more fuel to the fire, Lora Bentley over at IT Business Edge has found a few firms that attest costs are going down, not up.

This week Google announced the acquisition of Postini, a communications security and compliance company, for US$ 625 million.

Google has made inroads into the enterprise and higher education markets with notable additions to their Google Apps offering. But Postini's capabilities are an entirely different value proposition, making the search giant into a contender for the long, arduous battle with legal and corporate compliance concerns.

Three isn't an especially big number. But when you've spent EU€ 3 million on an idea that's taken three years to develop, the suddenly takes on a formidable quality.

Thus invested in time and money, Bridgedoc, formerly ScanData, just announced the global launch of its online paperless records management offering.

Come June, the SEC expects to pass some new guidance on how public companies -- particularly small ones -- can better prepare themselves for a SOX sting. In the meantime, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plans to issue simpler standards for third-party audits of company coffers.

Marched out as the universal solution to what's ailing American business, an issue perhaps too soily for the spin cycle, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is now characterized by the skyrocketing costs hitting the businesses that work to comply with it. And in 2007 the debate over Sarbanes-Oxley only rages on.

After five years in review, the Supreme Court amended a series of federal rules surrounding civil litigation. Included among these are an elaboration of existing rules regarding electronic discovery. Discovery is the process by which both sides of a litigation provide supporting evidence in a trial.

The changes have gone into effect as of December 1st and they require companies to keep track of employee e-mail, instant messages and other documents or communication delivered through or stored via the Internet. The industry impact is not subtle and Enterprise CMS vendors are responding quickly.