The customer is an integrated steel producer with major
production operations in the United States,
Canada, and Central Europe, with an annual raw steelmaking capability
of more than 31 million net tons. The
company’s 49,000 employees manufacture a wide range of value-added steel sheet
and tubular products for the automotive, appliance, container, industrial machinery,
construction, and oil and gas industries.
The Customer’s Challenge: Mitigate the Legal Risks of Sametime Chats
The customer uses IBM Lotus Sametime to facilitate real-time
communication and collaboration. But
while the business benefits of instant messaging are certainly compelling
(increased productivity, reduced costs, improved customer service, and so on),
IM chats are classified as ‘electronically stored information’ (ESI) that is
subject to electronic data discovery (EDD, or e-Discovery) under changes made
to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 2006.
Legal forensic experts recommend that all corporations
centrally archive their IM chats. Doing
so will drastically reduce the costs of electronic data discovery orders and
ensure quick and complete responses to such orders.
The customer wisely opted to follow this advice and went in
search of a Sametime archiving solution.
Instant Solution: Instant IMtegrity Archives
Instant IMtegrity Archives provides IM archiving, search,
and discovery for IBM Lotus Sametime. If
questions are asked about who said what to whom, Instant IMtegrity Archives
will provide irrefutable evidence.
The Results: FRCP
Compliance with Electronic Data Discovery Orders
“We have employees all over the world, so the presence
awareness inherent to instant messaging makes Sametime a vital communications
medium,” says the customer’s Sametime administrator. “But we were acutely aware of the risks
involved.”
To mitigate those risks, the customer conducted an extensive
search for a Sametime archiving solution. Instant IMtegrity Archives from Instant Technologies met every
requirement. And it was easy to deploy
and intuitive to use.
“Our deployment of Instant IMtegrity Archives de-risked our
usage of IBM Lotus Sametime,” continues the administrator. “Every IM thread is centrally archived so we
have a complete record of everything that happens in our Sametime
environment.Even more importantly,
every IM thread is indexed for fast and easy search and retrieval.”
“The business benefits of real-time communication and
collaboration are too great to ban its use simply to avoid electronic data
discovery,” says Peyton McManus,
President of Instant Technologies. “Smart companies such as this one are able to embrace instant messaging
because Instant IMtegrity archives enables them to respond quickly and
completely to EDD orders.”
“Instant IMtegrity Archives gives us peace of mind,”
concludes the administrator. “Computer
forensics services can cost tens of thousands of dollars per day. But because we were proactive in our approach
to rolling out Sametime, we know—and we can prove—that we have the full
contents of every IM thread at our fingertips.” |
