As companies struggle to meet a growing volume of regulatory compliance requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, an increasing amount of the burden is being shifted to IT departments. As a result, many IT managers are battling a two-headed beast: They"re being told by senior management to invest in technology to help document internal controls and archive records -- but often within the constraints of a flat IT budget, according to Tom Jenkins, CEO of Waterloo, Ontario-based Open Text Corp., a provider of enterprise content management software Computerworld caught up with Jenkins Tuesday to discuss these issues ahead of the company"s LinkUp Phoenix 2004 user group conference, being held next week.
How are business conditions? Are you seeing a lift in enterprise content management spending? We haven"t seen a lift in IT spending at all. A lot of people on Wall Street were expecting a lift in IT spending this year, (thinking) that we"re on a four-to-five-year cycle following Y2k and there should be an uplift in IT spending. We haven"t seen a change in buying patterns over the past two or three years.
What are the top challenges your customers are facing? Customers worldwide are really trying to come to grips with all of these regulatory requirements. That"s No. 1 on their agenda. Some of these things you have to pay attention to or they could knock you out of business, like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot Act.
Within IT itself, they"re being asked to meet regulatory compliance by general management amid a flat IT budget. That"s been pretty tough. I"ve watched a lot of people grapple with that.
It"s certainly top of mind, but it"s the balance of trying to do it within a reasonable budgetary envelope. IT is under a great deal of pressure by senior management to reduce costs. How do I meet regulatory laws while getting enough productivity out of it for my customers?
How do Open Text"s products help customers deal with regulatory compliance issues? There"s such a scramble to deal with the regulatory requirements, everyone"s dumping things into storage without giving thought to how it"s going to be accessed again.
At the end of the day, content management is really providing the software to manage the digital paper chase. Who wrote the e-mail? Who destroyed the e-mail? Why didn"t I get the e-mail? That sort of thing. Our software allows you to monitor and store this information.
What themes will be prevalent at LinkUp Phoenix 2004? People want to know how they can do compliance and at the same time gain enough productivity benefits so that it works out net as a benefit gain for the corporation. It really is striking a balance.