Noel Rath has been the Product Marketing Manager for HP TRIM software since 2008. He has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, the last 12 of which he has been specifically focused on information management solutions. We asked him about issues facing records managers this year.

FCM: What impact is the consumerization of IT--that is, the wish to have applications at work function like applications at home--having on records management professionals?

NR: With the development of advanced office technology, such as multi-function printers, we're witnessing increasing records management opportunities. Organizations can now take in physical documents quickly, increasing the scope of a records manager's jurisdiction. 

In the same vein, the increasing consumerization of IT raises many important records management concerns that fall beyond the jurisdiction of an organization's records management professionals. For example, we know that employees are using their own personal productivity tools in the workplace and circumventing the policies of the office, as well as the CIO who sets controls over new tools. Using these tools in the workplace certainly impacts the management of evidence surrounding business activities (i.e. records management). However, this isn't just the concern of records management professionals. It's also, and most importantly, the responsibility of the executives of the organization; they have ownership of the business records and are responsible for the policies enacted. As such, organizations must put policies and procedures in place to manage this content. 

FCM: In your conversations with customers, how are they handling social and mobile issues from a records management and governance perspective?

NR: Mobile and social technologies present a number of challenges, and these are trends we don't see going away. Records managers who are closely aligned with the IT team help organizations proactively address the issue. Records managers and IT are realizing that they need to work together to create an internal roadmap for mobility and cloud. 

On the social media front, some organizations try to enact a policy to prevent workers from using social media tools. We're seeing, however, that policy does not prevent people from using social media, so organizations are quickly realizing that they need to begin thinking about how to capture the data and enable records management. 

A recent HP-sponsored research report found that the primary concern for most CIOs is managing email as part of the records management system. This report found social media issues to be a secondary concern for CIOs. It's important to note that this doesn't mean social media isn't a concern for records managers and CIOs, but it does illustrate that there are still more pressing issues. 

On the other hand, a recent HP survey of government organizations found that more than 80 percent of respondents thought that social media would become important, or very important, in the future for communication and service delivery. 

Overall, we're seeing records managers realizing that they need to be on top of these trends and see them as opportunities. 

FCM: Are you finding customers embracing or rejecting the cloud? Why do you think they are responding the way they do?

NR: We see customers embracing the cloud. For example, some of our customers say they have challenges aligning with larger business units across the organization. With cloud computing, the infrastructure is no longer fragmented. It enables a singular view of content in the enterprise. Customers can federate the key information through a single interface and capture the data they need from the cloud. 

Determining the appropriate circumstance and environment for which to use the cloud raises interesting questions. For example, an HP partner, who markets HP TRIM Enterprise Records Management as an integrated solution in their business application suite, provides a SaaS service to their customers. They do not provide a records management in the cloud solution as a standalone service, but instead provide this as part of the complete suite of business applications that are content-enabled by HP TRIM. 

FCM: What advice do you give, as a vendor, to customers who are struggling to maintain some semblance of records management and governance with all of these new technologies?

NR: The first step is to think about the requirements of the enterprise in terms of records management. What are the needs of the corporation in terms legal discovery regulatory compliance obligations, while ensuring business efficiency, cost reduction and running the business? It's about policy. 

The many ways content is created and evolves through collaboration and ad hoc processes is expanding. This necessitates administrative-set processes to capture and manage content according to recordkeeping business rules and without burdening the user.

We're advising customers to consider solutions that capture emails, office documents, Microsoft SharePoint content and content from business applications into the records management system as seamlessly as possible, because overloading users with records management administrative tasks restrains the adoption of enterprise records management and affects the ability of the organization to discover information and make it available where and when it is needed. 

Systems that embed the records management rigor into all information management systems are important capabilities and should be at the forefront of the design of an enterprise information governance strategy. 

FCM: In light of the WikiLeaks story this month, how is it possible for companies to protect records and data in an increasingly digital world? 

NR: Think about the enterprise first; consider the security surrounding an individual's access to information as core to solving the enterprise records management challenge. For example, rigorous access to certified and secure records is part of the Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2v3 certified, privacy and FOI records management standard that has been developed to protect the records of U.S. defense organizations. This certification is widely considered to be an important requirement by records managers. At HP, we see an average of 42 percent of organizations looking to DoD for guidance on the rigorous requirements of a records management system.

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