How many of you think life would be so much easier if the brass in your company actually took Sarbanes-Oxley compliance seriously? With all the fear and loathing voiced over the C-level accountability of Section 404, we still hear from IT managers that their bosses still don't take SOX seriously.

The publicized fines levied for non-compliance have been few and far between, and the threat of incarceration for CEOs and CFOs has not been made real. Little wonder, according to some, why their compliance budgets get laughed at. And little wonder who gets blamed if material deficiencies crop up . . . you.So, how would you rate your execs on their respect for SOX? Would an example now and again make it easier to get the funding you need? Here's your chance to call them out. Take 20 seconds to respond to our current Voting Booth poll.

And Now For The Good News On a positive note, compliance practices can force improvements in information technology: Our recent reader poll looked at the affect compliance management is having on your overall storage architecture. And it turns out compliance practices are forcing organizations to improve their storage systems which, of course, leads to better data handling performance throughout the enterprise.

Forty-four percent of the respondents indicated that compliance management has not yet but probably would contribute to improvements in their overall storage architecture. Another 31 percent said compliance has definitely caused improvements in the storage architecture. And 25 percent envisioned no storage improvements as a result of compliance management.

That's 75 percent on the positive side for storage improvement, a pretty good batting average considering all the other things you have to budget for to manage your compliance initiatives.