Free Records Management for SharePoint 2003: 80-20 Retention Server

Last month I spent some time with a customer discussing their SharePoint implementation, during these sessions they brought the following product to my attention: 80-20 Retention Server. It has been available for a couple of months (I know I’m a little bit behind compared to my fellow bloggers Mark and the other Mark, but it’s interesting enough to mention once again. Basically 80-20 Retention Server is a product that handles the life cycle of documents stored in SharePoint 2003. 2007 Microsoft Office System is still quite far on the horizon, so this product nicely fills up the gap. I haven't got any hands-on experience, but it looks very promising!

From their site:
For organizations using Microsoft SharePoint that need to manage the retention lifecycle of electronic documents and email, 80-20 Retention Server is a free enterprise software solution that automates the retention process by applying information retention policies as part of everyday business processes. 80-20 Retention Server enables organizations to index, link, store, search, access and ultimately disposes of records stored in SharePoint over their complete lifecycle.

What is Retention and who needs it anyway?
Records Management or retention is just a way of describing the process of managing the storage and eventual disposal of business records. A business record is evidence of what the business does. Many of the documents in SharePoint Team Sites are likely to be business records: Things like Project Plans, Purchase Orders, Financial Statements and Personnel Files are all records. Most businesses are now required to keep business records for defined time periods and be able to produce them on request to a regulator or a Court.