Microsoft is experimenting with a potential product that would give companies more control over the electronic messages their staff exchange in order to better meet regulatory requirements and e-discovery laws. <\/p>\n
Employee Managed Mailbox (EMM), is being used internally at Microsoft and may eventually turn into a commercial offering, according to Joel Freedman, chief financial officer at Microsoft Canada. <\/p>\n
“Instead of e-mail that would be utilizing the hard drive, you’d have e-mail that gets managed by a server,” he said, adding that a server-based product could help companies do a better job of adhering to compliance-related policies. “You could have a one-month, one-year, or three-year limit on retention [of an e-mail message], for example.” <\/p>\n
Freedman suggested EMM could become a direct way for Microsoft to assist corporations who are struggling to keep up with accounting, privacy, and other rules that increasingly govern the way they handle information. <\/p>\n
Although some vendors are developing specific tools to match the requirement of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley legislation or Canada’s Bill 198, many firms, Microsoft included, are making the best of existing office productivity tools to keep themselves out of trouble. <\/p>\n
“For most companies, it’s Office and e-mail,” said Jeff Dunmall, principal with Toronto-based IT consulting firm iMason, which specializes in Microsoft-based technologies. “The problem is if you send out something about a new process via e-mail to five people for comment or approval, you’ve suddenly got five different versions of that document.” <\/p>\n