by Robert Smallwood, KM World Magazine
04-01-2007
The inevitability and cost of litigation have become a grim fact for corporations. Much of the costly detail uncovered in litigation has been found in archived emails or IMs that may have been forwarded and taken out of context beyond the intention of the original sender. Over the past several years we have witnessed a “raid” on corporate archived email by overzealous litigators.
Recordless email refers to email that can be sent and received with no record left on a server or either the Sender or Receivers’ computer. How does it do that? At no time throughout the process is there a connection between the header and the body of the message, keeping the entire communication recordless. By the time your stream message has been read, it is already deleted from Void’s servers, and it never exists on the computer of either the Sender or the Recipient. Working alongside existing email systems, it is uses an innovative messaging queue structure that is a hybrid between e-mail and IM.
VaporStream from Void Communications claims to be the first and only recordless email. Currently, it is a separate, hosted solution offered over the Internet but the start-up company is working feverishly to build an MS Outlook Plug-in, and to support Windows Mobile and Blackberry functionality.
Available for an annual subscription fee of $39.99 per user, there are approximately 5,000 individuals and 15 smaller companies reportedly using the service, which was released in September, 2006.
Who can’t use VaporStream? Basically, anyone working in an environment where their phone calls at work are monitored, such as broker/dealers overseen by the SEC.
Robert Smallwood is a Partner with IMERGE Consulting and author of the book Taming the Email Tiger. He may be reached at Robert.Smallwood@imergeconsult.com.
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