The customer is one of the world’s largest financial services institutions, serving more than 50 million individual and institutional clients in the United States and abroad.  For over a century, this company has helped clients both grow and protect their wealth with information, advice, and choice on a broad range of asset management, insurance, securities, and employment solutions.

The Customer’s Challenge:  Comply with Instant Messaging Discovery Requests

SEC Rule 17a-4 requires that certain business records and communications be kept (and accessible) for three years, and that transaction-related communications be kept and made accessible for seven years after the event.  In March 2003, the NYSE issued a memo stating that SEC Rule 17a-4 requires the archiving of both e-mail and instant message chats.

Because 14,000 of the customer’s employees use IBM Lotus Sametime to communicate in real-time, the company required a solution that would securely log, index, and archive thousands of Sametime chats—every single day.  In addition, individual managers often need to review Sametime chat threads related to specific transactions.

The customer’s IT department receives discovery orders on a daily basis, either related to SEC compliance audits or internal oversight.  As a result, they turned to Instant Technologies to help them deal with such a high volume of discovery requests.

Instant Solution:  Instant IMtegrity Archives

The Results:  Regulatory Compliance; Confidence to Extend Sametime Usage

“Our deployment of Instant IMtegrity Archives was a total success,” says the customer’s IT Manager.  “It was easy-as-anything to install, and it is simply intuitive to use.  We are now able to quickly and completely comply with SEC audits and internal discovery requests.”

Instant IMtegrity Archives also provides two additional benefits:  “We are able to extend Sametime by sending our archives to WORM media,” continues the IT Manager, “and we have sufficient confidence in our Sametime environment that we will be deploying it to more and more of our employees overseas.”

“This customer’s success with Instant IMtegrity Archives validates the careful thought that went into its development,” says Peyton McManus, President of Instant Technologies.  “IM chats often contain important business intelligence, so it is vital that those chats be preserved and easily accessible for future reference.”

The customer’s relationship with Instant Technologies may soon expand.

“Sametime usage is spreading across our user population,” says the IT Manager.  “This creates opportunities to leverage IM’s presence awareness in other aspects of our communications.”

One such example is Instant Live Support, which turns Sametime into a real-time help desk and customer service portal to increase employee productivity and improve customer satisfaction.

“When we consider the benefits of providing our employees and our customers with expert answers in real-time, the true value of instant messaging really hits home,” says the IT Manager.  “And we know from happy experience that Instant Technologies builds Sametime solutions that exceed expectations.”