Compliance: Opportunity for the channel?

Compliance (Sarbanes Oxley Act, International Financial Reporting Standard, International Accounting Standard and Basel II) is on the agenda for many companies; as well as your customers you may also have friends and family now involved in this arduous task right now.

The reality for the IT channel is that anything that presents end users with great difficulty often results in a prime opportunity for the reseller to provide a solution. Is compliance one such opportunity?

AMR Research recently stated: Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance efforts over the past two years have confirmed that SOX is an ongoing process, not a one-time project to be completed and put on the shelf. And ongoing process means ongoing investment. Our annual compliance survey of IT and business leaders shows companies will spend more than $6.0B on SOX compliance efforts in 2006, on par with the $6.1B spent in 2005.

So there is a major amount of money being spent, but what of the impact on this side of the Atlantic; we asked several industry experts for their views on how it is affecting the UK and Europe.