IBM is looking to help companies maintain compliance on corporate social media and unified communications through a partnership with communications compliance provider Actiance.

The partnership allows IBM to offer the Actiance Platform as part of its Information Lifecycle Governance product portfolio. The platform’s addition to IBM’s security lineup is expected to meet the needs of customers who have been clamoring for additional ways to capture, manage and archive content from social media and collaboration tools, as well as to meet changing regulatory compliance and eDiscovery requirements, according to the announcement.

The Actiance Platform works by giving users the ability to look through archived communications using the company’s cloud-based analytics software, according to the announcement.  By making their services available to IBM customers, the company said users will be able to govern their enterprise communications across more than 70 different communication channels, ultimately reducing the cost and risk associated with letting information go unmonitored.

“Unified communications, social media and cloud archiving are changing enterprise communications and how companies must control and manage those conversations so they are in compliance,” said James Schellhase, worldwide business leader for IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance Group, in a statement. “With the Actiance Platform, IBM customers are now able to actively enforce and centrally manage policies to safely and securely govern all their communications data in the cloud at a lower cost.”