REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 24, 2014) - Actiance, the leading provider of compliance, security, archiving and eDiscovery for all critical business communications, today announced new Vantage for Lync features to help enterprises efficiently manage governance challenges for Lync 2013 and previous versions of Lync (Lync will be renamed as Skype for Business in the first half of 2015).
"Unified communications are finally living up to their name. Many organizations are on a journey to using a single application, like Lync 2013, for multiple channels including IM, chat and voice," says Trevor Daughney, Vice President of Marketing at Actiance. "At Actiance, we are dedicated to rapid product innovation to ensure our customers have the controls they need to be able to make the most of these communication channels to engage with their colleagues and customers."
The rapid adoption of Lync 2013 opens up new complications in governance. First, as Lync voice adoption continues to grow, the need for enhanced call recording capabilities to meet regulatory requirements will also grow. Second, since Lync provides everyone in the organization with access to anyone, it raises the question as to whether to allow certain individuals or groups to place one-way boundaries specifying who can talk to them. Lastly, the Lync 2013 paired pool architecture necessary for HA/DR can lead to duplicative data that confounds the governance process.
As a result, Actiance is announcing three new features in Vantage for Lync to help organizations efficiently manage these emerging Lync governance challenges: (1) enhanced voice recording capabilities (2) directional ethical walls; and (3) paired pools de-duplication.
Enhanced Voice Recording -- The Dodd-Frank Act, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS), Sarbanes-Oxley, the UK's Financial Services Authority, and other regulatory regimes require voice call recording in certain circumstances. Meeting these requirements can be complicated on Lync where communications may include two-party or multi-party conference calls. These recordings must be captured from each of the individual caller's perspective.
Actiance's voice recording is now Verba Powered. Actiance has partnered with Verba Technologies, a leading provider of call recording for unified communications, to capture voice recordings and provide advanced support features -- such as voice disclaimers and "local routing recording" (where the call is not forced to be routed through a centralized datacenter for recording) -- to optimize WAN performance.
Additionally, Actiance uniquely enhances voice recording. Vantage for Lync provides the ability to capture and review these disparate call recordings in a packaged "thread" in full context. Vantage for Lync also captures Skype calls federated to Lync as well as Lync calls traveling across devices -- desktop phones, laptop clients, Lync mobile devices, remote clients, and via web applications -- to ensure all calls can be recorded, independent of a device or user's location.
Furthermore, Vantage for Lync's common policy setting capabilities for IM and persistent chat now extend to voice, including ethical walls, tagging and annotations for compliance review. Actiance's TrueCompliance™ functionality also extends to voice recordings to ensure proper capture and chain of custody tracking of relevant data for preservation purposes.
"Companies are now more receptive to expanding Lync deployments from just IM and presence," states Rich Costello, IDC's Senior Research Analyst for Unified Communications and Enterprise Communications Infrastructure. "By moving from traditional PBX to a single-platform communications system for the full spectrum of communications, organizations are able to save on IT budget while providing employees with faster access to the information they need."
Directional Ethical Walls -- Lync may pose boundary-setting needs within enterprises, both vertically up-and-down the hierarchy structure and horizontally between specific groups or individuals.
"We've received requirements to be able to protect the CEO or key executives from receiving voice communications from field personnel, but still allow for IM," says Steve White, Actiance's Director of Product Management for Vantage. "The tele-health scenario is another good example where healthcare organizations are using Lync video capabilities, but with strict HIPAA requirements, organizations need solid walls to protect against unauthorized or inadvertent entrance into a diagnostic or surgical video communication."
Vantage for Lync's directional ethical walls provide one-way invitation controls for Lync communications through modality-based and custom-based parameters, based on a user's group and role and the specific needs of the organization.
Paired Pools De-Duplication -- The paired pool architecture of Lync 2013 allows organizations to capture data via a Lync Server in two locations for HA/DR. In this situation, Lync captures duplicate records of a communication. Vantage for Lync has the intelligence to only capture a single copy of the entire communication. This new feature allows enterprises to take advantage of redundancy in the Lync 2013 architecture, while enabling storage savings and review efficiency, without the penalty of data loss.
Modality -- Actiance announces an official partnership with Modality Systems, a Microsoft Gold Partner and specialist Lync services provider. "We help organizations extend the usability of Lync through partnering with Actiance, a leader in Lync governance and compliance management," says John Lamb, CEO and Co-Founder of Modality. "Together, we help enterprises make the most of their Lync 2013 investment."
Directional ethical walls, and data de-duplication for paired pools are available today. Enhanced voice recording for Lync will be available in Q1 2015.
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About Vantage
Vantage simplifies management and governance of enterprise communication and collaboration tools by providing organizations with granular policy control over their communication networks, in some cases drilling down to the feature level to address strict compliance requirements.
About Actiance
Actiance® is the global leader in communication, collaboration, and social media governance for the enterprise. Its governance platform is used by millions of professionals across dozens of industries. With the power of communication, collaboration, and social media at their fingertips, Actiance helps professionals everywhere to engage with customers and colleagues so they can unleash social business. The Actiance platform gives organizations the ability to ensure compliance for all their communications channels. It provides real-time content monitoring, centralized policy management, contextual capture of content and context-awareTM archiving which improves the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of eDiscovery and helps protect users from malware and accidental or malicious leakage of information. Actiance supports all leading email, social media, unified communications, collaboration, and IM platforms, including Facebook (FB), LinkedIn (LNKD), Twitter, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), IBM (IBM), Jive (JIVE), Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco (CSCO), and Salesforce.com (CRM). Actiance headquarters are in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit http://www.actiance.com or call 1-888-349-3223.