The new records management capabilities delivered by the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have been certified according to the 5015.2 standard from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Microsoft has applauded the occasion and revealed that the 5015.2 standard is in fact a benchmark for both governmental and corporate institutions, indicating top solutions available for records and document management.

"As government regulations around information management and preservation have increased, many organizations have taken a hard look at their records management practices," said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft. "We made enterprise content management a major focus during the development of Office SharePoint Server 2007, and we're pleased that our customers can now have the confidence of knowing it has been approved through the DoD's rigorous 5015.2 certification process."

According to the Redmond Company, in order to meet the DoD 5015.2 criteria, Exchange Server 2007 has also been bundled into the platform, while SharePoint Server 2007 enjoyed additional help. Microsoft informed that an add-on pack has been implemented in order to enhance the native management capabilities of the product. SharePoint Server 2007 customers will be able to download and integrate the add-on later this year free of charge.

"While highly regulated industries such as financial services, utilities and pharmaceuticals have always had records retention requirements, changes in government regulations, such as the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, will have an impact on companies across the board as they realize the need to implement records management to address new electronic discovery requirements," said Kenneth Chin, research vice president at Gartner Inc. "Gartner recommends that enterprises use the DOD 5015.2 standard as a key requirement when acquiring any records management product, along with consideration of local standards."