|  |
Stellent Launches Universal Records Management
New enterprise records and retention management application is first to enable organizations to apply records and retention policies, as well as legal discovery and holds, to all relevant content in the enterprise
Stellent, Inc. (Nasdaq: STEL), a global provider of content management solutions, announced today the launch of Stellent Universal Records Management, a new application built on a distributed architecture that enables companies to apply records and retention policies in a consistent, legally defensible way across the enterprise.
Stellent Universal Records Management allows organizations to define, manage and execute records and retention management policies for all enterprise content from a single application. The system is a complete, Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2- and 4-compliant records management application that performs both electronic and physical records management. In addition to managing the records customers choose to store in its built-in repository, Stellent Universal Records Management uses an agent architecture to enforce records management and retention policies and schedules in applications and repositories throughout an organization. This "in-place” functionality enables companies to leave content in its native location rather than moving it to a central repository for records and retention management; apply rules directly to content where it resides; and manage the disposition of all content, not merely the content explicitly declared as records. Agents also send information back to the Stellent server, enabling it to maintain an up-to-date catalog of all critical enterprise content. This server also facilitates legal discovery activities and applies litigation holds to relevant content.
"Stellent Universal Records Management is the first product that empowers organizations to apply records and retention policies, as well as legal discovery and holds, to all relevant content across the enterprise," said Dan Ryan, chief operating officer for Stellent. "These capabilities allow companies to apply policies and holds to more content, more consistently, with minimal administrative effort and disruption for end users. With the exponential growth of digital content, the advent of email as a primary communications tool, and the rise in documentation-intense compliance mandates, this capability continues to grow in importance."
According to Gartner, Inc.,1 "When considering records management vendors, look beyond basic records management functionality. Integration with ECM, e-mail archiving, compliance and discovery solutions is essential. Also consider the ability to federate records management across multiple content repositories, as well as whether you need to adopt a 'manage in place' or 'centralized' approach to records management."
"Content is increasingly located in numerous disparate information technology (IT) systems across an organization," said Sue Feldman, research vice president for IDC. "Companies must find a way to align all of these applications and repositories in order to optimize records and retention management and e-discovery processes. In-place management of files is a viable option that has minimal impact on applications and end users. Content simply stays in its native environment unless a policy requires it to be moved to a specific records management repository."
Enabling Third-Party Applications with Records and Retention Management
Through its agent architecture, Stellent Universal Records Management can apply records and retention schedules and litigation holds to content located in nearly any repository or application. Its agent application programming interfaces (APIs) are open and published. Stellent’s own repositories - including Stellent Content Server and Stellent Imaging and Business Process Management - will be the first to present themselves to the Universal Records Management server using agents.
The company also is partnering with leading solution providers to develop agents that apply records and retention management policies and litigation holds to content residing within their applications. The individual applications will continue to perform their functions but will do so in ways consistent with enterprise policies. The first such agents Stellent will release are for Symantec Enterprise Vault and Microsoft SharePoint Server, as well as Windows, Unix and Linux file servers. These agents will cover the majority of relevant content in most organizations. In addition, customers and partners can leverage the open, modular nature of the system to build agents for their own commercial or custom applications.
"Integrating Enterprise Vault with Stellent Universal Records Management means emails and other content sent to the Enterprise Vault archive are automatically classified as records and managed in accordance with corporate policy without having to remove them from the archive," said Nick Mehta, senior director, product management, Symantec Corp. "This allows organizations to leverage the scalable storage of the archive in a consistent fashion while controlling the business records stored there or in other systems."
"Organizations continue to roll out SharePoint Products and Technologies at a staggering pace. With over 70 million licenses sold, SharePoint Portal Server is one of the fastest growing server products in Microsoft’s history," said Seth Patton, group product manager, Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. "Thanks to the investments we’re making in enterprise content management capabilities in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Stellent’s ability to centrally manage records schedules and retention policies, organizations will have a single platform for all of their records and retention management needs."
Centralizing and Streamlining both Records Management and Retention Management
Stellent Universal Records Management gives organizations the ability to centrally create records and retention policies and apply them to all content throughout an enterprise. Records managers can determine whether records should remain in place or be transferred to the Universal Records Management repository. The Stellent system automates many of the tasks records managers used to perform manually while providing more consistency and control over records management processes.
Furthermore, the Stellent solution not only centralizes retention management policies, it also provides management capabilities well beyond those typically available in individual applications and storage systems. Rather than basing retention rules on simply file size or aging, business rules based on multiple criteria drive retention schedules. These criteria can include combinations of document state, usage statistics, security, publishing rules and any other metadata known about the content.
"It is critical for our organization to have an enterprise-wide retention and disposition solution for records and non-records in order to comply with our records management policy, as well as decrease costs and mitigate our litigation risks," said Janet Harris-Campbell, director of information technology services and chief information officer for the City of Ottawa. "Stellent offers retention management for both types of content. By utilizing its content management-rich records management capabilities, we are able to streamline our entire processes for retaining the information we need, holding or preserving required files, and identifying and destroying information that is no longer necessary."
Mitigating Legal Risks and Facilitating Compliance
For legal and compliance personnel, Stellent Universal Records Management provides a searchable catalog of all important content within an organization plus the means to place a hold on relevant content and, if necessary, move or copy it into the central repository. In a proactive manner, the Stellent solution optimizes the environment by cataloging the content and reducing the amount to be managed and searched. Additionally, all actions are logged and available for audits and reports.
"Given the current risk management and regulatory landscape, implementing an effective document retention and records management practice is becoming more critical to building and maintaining a strong corporate governance and compliance program," said Frank Wu, managing director in the business risk consulting practice of Protiviti Inc. "There is a growing demand for combining key business processes with the right enabling technologies to support and balance the legal, business and IT needs of an organization."
According to Forrester Research,2 "increasing litigation and high costs will force enterprises to think more proactively about how to collect, review, format, and produce content in response to a discovery request. … An enterprise eDiscovery platform gives enterprises a holistic view of all content discovered and managed across all litigation and regulatory requests, and helps to eliminate the pain of reactive eDiscovery by giving organizations a tool to be more proactive. A broad view of content ensures that each content item is handled consistently across discovery requests."
Reducing IT Costs and Decreasing Content Clutter
Two of the biggest challenges facing IT departments today are accommodating content storage growth and ensuring applications and search functions operate effectively in the face of rapidly increasing content. Stellent Universal Records Management can help IT staffs address these issues by instituting content retention schedules and policies - often developed by specific departments and business units - that systematically facilitate the disposition of outdated or underutilized content. By eliminating unnecessary information, organizations can reduce content storage costs and increase the performance of search functions and business applications.
Informational E-Seminars
To learn more about Stellent Universal Records Management, register for an e-seminar at www.stellent.com/seminarURM. 30.03.2006, Stellent GmbH
Subscribe to the newsletter | | |
| | | |
