Survey: Sarbanes-Oxley has big impact

Sixty-eight percent of U.S. corporate IT executives said complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is having a major impact on their IT operations, according to a new survey.

Mercury Interactive Corp. and the Economis Intelligence Unit questioned 800 IT executives in 22 countries about Sarbanes-Oxley, which established new requirements for corporate governance and financial disclosure.

Compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley and to similar regulations in the 22 countries was cited as one of the greatest challenges facing IT managers by more than 80 percent of the largest companies in the Asia-Pacific region, 74 percent of U.S. companies, and 45 percent of the largest Middle-Eastern companies, the report said.

"The survey results show that compliance mandates are impacting IT worldwide," said Christopher Lochhead, chief marketing officer at Mercury. "Compliance mandates require changes in business processes, which in turn require changes to business-critical applications. Companies are implementing IT Governance strategies and software to establish a sustainable approach to making these changes and lowering the cost and risk to the business."

Expected benefits from completing compliance initiatives include better financial reporting, IT governance and business process improvements, the survey said.