IBM Unveils New eDiscovery Offerings

By Barb Mosher | Published Aug 6, 2008

IBM has released new extensions to it's ECM platform designed to support eDiscovery and help its clients manage compliance better.

The new eDiscovery software integrates with IBM's auto-classification and records management technology as well as it's BPM capabilities.

eDiscovery Capabilities

So what kinds of things can you do with this new software?

Automate the collecting, searching and classifying of critical information across multiple content sources — this helps manage information for compliance and electronic discovery requests
Still maintain security and track changes
Support Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) compliance
Integrate with BPM processes to standardize, control and automate legal discovery workflows

IBM's eDiscovery Manager

IBM calls the new eDiscovery Manager the “cornerstone” of their solution offering. The eDiscovery Manager brings the management of e-discovery in-house and provided the following capabilities:

Provides insights into collected evidence
Prioritizes downstream evidence review, analysis and production
To search, cull, hold and export case-relevant email evidence
Utilizes email archiving solutions
Leverages ECM repositories

IBM claims the e-discovery, email and ECM capabilities complement each other and that integration costs are not significant. All that to mean that it should be cheaper to implement their solution than another third party option.

The eDiscovery Manager is expected to be released at the end of this month.

All Part of a Big Happy Family

The new eDiscovery software is part of the IBM Compliance Warehouse for Legal Control and it supports the broader Information Governance Strategy.

The Compliance Warehouse is a hardware, software and services solution for compliance. Together the two are expected to provide a complete solution for evidence preservation.

Different Approaches, Same Result

So for IBM, the solution for eDiscovery and compliance was to build their own and integration with their ECM solution. For other vendors, such as Interwoven and HP, the solution was to buy something already on the market and integrate it as their own.

Even Oracle and EMC Documentum have their own solutions well underway.

So it does appear that no matter what ECM provider you use, you can be assured they are serious about ensuring eDiscovery is top of mind and that all your compliance concerns are covered.