Xythos Software, developer of Basic Content Services solutions, introduced its Enterprise Document Management Suite (EDMS) 6.0. The upgrade to its flagship product will now feature fully-integrated document and records management capabilities, allowing customers to manage content throughout its life cycle in compliance with a variety of government and industry regulations.
Organizations challenged with responding to regulations including FERPA, HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley have looked to records management software vendors for help, but often discovered that employing separate applications for managing documents and records introduces a new set of complications. While traditional enterprise content management (ECM) vendors have responded by purchasing records management companies and bundling their technology, the cost of these solutions has been out of reach for most organizations – often costing more than $500 per user just to license. Xythos has chosen the more revolutionary approach of integrating DoD 5015.2 certified records management features with its basic content management applications so that customers can quickly and economically provide a solution to this problem for all of their employees.
With legal discovery costs averaging $500,000 or more and with virtually any business information considered admissible in court, companies are struggling to apply solutions that can help protect their entire enterprise. “Records management policy has traditionally been administered in a decentralized manner by departments or schools and colleges within our university without the help of automated tools,” said Bruce Maas Interim CIO at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. “Xythos’ new EDMS 6.0 could help us to begin to apply records management policy more comprehensively and consistently across the entire university – and give our faculty and staff the tools necessary to better manage this challenging requirement," he added.
Aimed at assisting organizations in managing corporate risk, establishing best practices as well as meeting compliance requirements, EDMS 6.0 introduces new features such as enhanced auditing, role-based security models and improved reporting and archiving. Applied together, these new features will allow customers to distribute records management responsibility while preserving department level collaborative flexibility, even as content is consolidated to reduce costs. Permanent and vital records management functions will also help organizations better respond to disaster recovery requirements.
“While we recognize the importance of what DoD 5015.2 certification means to many of our customers, our goal was to integrate records management into a BCS application in a manner that will be more generally useful,” said Ed Miller, Xythos CEO. “That means that records management should be transparent to most users and not get in the way of how they go about managing and sharing information every day,” he added.
Xythos expects that the integration of records management features within its applications will further enhance the appeal of BCS and accelerate its adoption as a common desktop technology for knowledge workers. Basic content services are gaining increased attention within enterprise organizations. Industry researchers at Gartner have advised: “Enterprises that have skilled workers should deploy BCS to lighten the load on their e-mail systems and improve collaboration among those who create routine documents.”1 ” Their modest cost means that they are affordable and justifiable for most enterprises as a horizontal infrastructure that can benefit all employees, and not just a select group,” added Mark R. Gilbert, co-author and Gartner research vice president.2
The Enterprise Document Management Suite 6.0 will undergo final certification testing with the DoD Joint Interoperability Test Command this fall and is expected to be available by the end of the year.