LexisNexis South Africa has entered into an exclusive alliance partnership with Cura Software Solutions to offer companies a powerful new compliance solution called CuraComply.

Bateleur Software has upped its expertise by forming a partnership with Datanomic, a UK compliance and data management solutions specialist.

Although there is a huge responsibility on company directors to ensure that governance, risk and compliance policies are implemented, most companies do not have clarity on who manages this critical area of the business.

The ITIL Expert, currently one of the most sought after IT certifications in the world, is now available in South Africa from Foster-Melliar, which was the first company to bring the ITIL best practice framework to the local market.

The Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoDSA) has introduced a revolutionary new tool to help measure, enable and report on corporate governance in all types of organisations.

In conjunction with its Information Governance Council meeting, IBM has announced new data protection software, a line of consulting services and resources and previewed information monitoring software to help organisations expand their use of trusted information to improve decision making.

With the flurry of acts and legislation that have been and are due to be put into place; not to mention regulations, frameworks and recommendations for corporate governance; organisations are faced with the fact that compliance is fast becoming a key business issue, writes Jayen Vyravene , MD of Quency.

The collapse of Enron, WorldCom and other corporate accounting scandals of 2002 not only almost brought Wall Street to its knees; it also signaled the beginning of a new age of compliance.

Touted as a saviour to corporate South Africa during and particularly during the global credit crisis, the most recent update to the King Code and Report on Governance for South Africa, King III, is scheduled to come into effect on 1 March 2010.

The King 3 report on corporate governance, released last September, has thus far lived up to its expectations – and has taken corporate governance to an internationally acclaimed level, says Tony Cunningham, MD of IT-focused business compliance company, Wynleigh International.

The extent to which companies in Africa have complied with information archiving, retrieval and management to meet statutory requirements will become more apparent as the continent measures the impact of a more mature tax system, writes James McKerrell, chief executive of CRS Technologies.

There are some interesting indicators providing evidence that, during 2009, directors and officers of South African companies have been proactive in addressing previously neglected aspects of their operational risk management obligations. As King III (Note 1) had correctly identified, information systems were historically used as enablers to business but have now become pervasive in the sense that they are built into the strategy of the business.