"For a company that's "not saying anything" about the next version of its Office productivity suite, Microsoft sure has done a lot of talking of late. In fact, if all of the hints Microsoft has dropped recently come true, Office 12 will have many interesting new features--but potentially some administrative shortcomings."

"To address new record-keeping regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, Microsoft is working on ways to "lock up" Office documents so that they can be read or shared only by authorized users. Under Office 12, enterprises will be able to set rules for document handling and enforce them using server-based software. The days of passing any file to any other user, via e-mail or floppy, may be over.

We applaud Microsoft for the improvements, but this last "enhancement" gives us the heebie-jeebies. True, SOX and HIPAA call for greater control and auditing of documents. But how can IT departments even begin to handle the task of setting cross-enterprise rules for handling documents, much less enforcing them to the file level? This is an administrative nightmare. We hope Microsoft looks at this technology long and hard before releasing it."

http://www.nwc.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1611buzz1