CRM vendor Autonomy (News - Alert) has introduced Autonomy Information Governance, what company officials describe as an "information governance platform that automates real-time policy management based on forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of all enterprise information."

 

Autonomy's capability is being marketed as a step towards "reducing risks inherent in information" by "applying policy based on understanding what an e-mail, document or phone recording says instead of relying solely on its metadata," company officials say.

 

In the wake of the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, sub-prime mortgage and credit crisis and highly publicized internal fraud cases, organizations are "under increased pressure to consistently implement information policies for finding, holding and disposing of information in a timely manner," Autonomy officials say.

 

Most global 2000 organizations "have defined and updated their information management policies," they say, adding that "the complexities of implementing and enforcing these policies is challenging even the world's leading companies."

 

"Most organizations are under the misconception that their current technologies are enough; that is until they've had one really bad experience," said Browning Marean, Partner, DLA Piper US LLP.

 

Autonomy Information Governance provides an environment to visualize and control policy-driven information in the organization through "a vendor-neutral infrastructure using more than 400 out-of-the-box data repository connectors that allow management in place and retrieval of e-mail, documents, audio, or video information across the entire enterprise," company officials say.

 

"Developments in the global regulatory and legal environment are compelling many corporations to start taking a unified approach to IT governance, IT compliance, and IT risk management," said Vivian Tero, Research Manager, Compliance Infrastructure, IDC (News - Alert).

 

Last week Cardiff, a division of Autonomy Corporation and a vendor of BPM and intelligent document products, was named a "Cool Vendor" in the Gartner (News - Alert) report titled "Cool Vendors in Business Process Management, 2008" by Janelle B. Hill, Marc Kerremans, Michele Cantara.

 

Cardiff's Business Process Management was cited for its rich user interaction, unstructured information processing and mobile process management. Its intelligence and automation is based on Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer technology, which incorporates pattern matching and linguistic analysis capabilities to "make computers work more like people," company officials say.

 

Using Autonomy's IDOL technology is credited with letting Cardiff sell to the BPM market, including voice-based approvals, automatic location of subject matter experts and the ability to use process contents to drive information searches through unstructured enterprise content.