What does the future of communications hold?
Bob Artner
Published: 21 Apr 2005 14:55 BST
When we think about messaging for the enterprise, is the glass half full or half empty? Optimists can point to the introduction of new handhelds that integrate voice mail, email and calendaring, the maturity of VoIPRSS readers. Pessimists point to the continuing deluge of spam, ever-more sophisticated phishing techniques, and the burdens of increased regulatory compliance.
To find out what the road ahead looks like, we interviewed Martin Hall of INBOX, the IT Conference, which is devoted to enterprise messaging. As you can see, while not ignoring the challenges, he is more optimistic about the future than one might expect. He also blogs regularly on these issues. If you want more information on INBOX, you can visit the INBOX Web site.
When you look at all the issues surrounding messaging, what do you think are most important challenges facing us right now?
We're seeing a key evolutionary movement of email — from stand-alone application to mission-critical — that's an integrated part of every business, with security, storage, searchability, legislative compliance and business integration being the most urgent factors.
We all know about the challenges of inbound email abuse. But what do we need to do about controlling outbound email to control zombies and the outflow of critical and confidential business information? Has your business done a controlled evaluation of the regulations that impact them and the consequences for the capabilities of their own messaging systems? Are corporate policies in place that govern email use in your organisation? Can your users easily locate key information which is inevitably stored in email? These are some of the most pressing issues for IT managers who are responsible for their email communications backbone.
In the United States, a lot of attention has been paid to corporate governance and document retention, in light of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other legislation. Are we creating an inherent conflict between messaging's usefulness for communication and increasing regulatory requirements?
I don't think so. How we do business is and should be governed. Post Enron and Worldcom, everyone should be concerned about due process and rules. Emails are business records and subject to discovery process. We need to think of email as digital business records rather than amorphous and temporary phone conversations. Those bits have liability implications, so business leaders and IT managers should know what they should and can keep — and what they should and can destroy. And their systems should support those requirements.
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