get raked over the goals when any incident happened,” he says.
Companies lacking archiving methods for platforms like social media and text messaging typically just banned their employees from using them altogether, Lyman says. “We focus on enabling the capture of these alternative communications into the primary enterprise platform,” he says. “People should be able to use whatever it is that they want to use and we’ll get the logs where they need to be.”
Certain platforms, such as BlackBerry and the Microsoft Office Communication Server, have previously had technology in place to archive the communications on their individual platforms, but that the logs came in the form of flat, unstructured .TXT files. “It’s kind like this black box of doom,” says Lyman of the traditional methods of auditing and data discovery.
Firms beyond traditional regulated spaces—like financial services, healthcare, and defense—still have the potential for being hit with big electronic discovery costs after the fact, if they aren’t archiving conversations, Lyman says. Company communications are subject to being subpoenaed in the case of wrongful termination and sexual harassment litigation, and even in the divorce cases of their individual employees—and companies are forced to foot the bill.
Dexrex is largely focused on appealing to smaller and medium-sized businesses to enable them to protect themselves. It offers the technology under a software-as-a-service model, selling the product from around $1 or $2 per user per month, which enable even small brokerage shops to use the technology, Lyman says.
Dexrex bases its entire business model around channel resellers, and currently has a sales partnership with Needham, MA-based Sonian, which packages ChatSync with its own e-mail archival software. The company has raised $2.8 million to date, including a $1 million financing in February to help deploy its software through the partner networks and bring on more resellers. The company is working on raising another round, targeting investors with experience in the enterprise IT world, Lyman says.
