Open Text Extends eDiscovery Capabilities to eDOCS

By Irina Guseva (@irina_guseva) Feb 17, 2009

Open Text has extended its Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment solution released in partnership with Recommind late last year to its records management eDOCS customers.

Open Text eDOCS customers will get eDiscovery capabilities woven into their overall content, records and e-mail management practices. Will this solution play the get-out-of-(recession)-jail-free-card for struggling lawyers?

Engaging the Power of Recommind

Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment solution is targeted towards corporate legal departments that need to minimize the need for third-party data processing and gain a better control of the soaring costs of legal reviews by culling irrelevant information.

Open Text’s decision to engage Recommind makes a lot of sense. Recommind is known for its search-powered information risk management (IRM) solutions. The eDiscovery product from Open Text combines Recommind’s Insite Legal Hold application with Open Text ECM Suite. The combination not only addresses the critical need for eDiscovery in an age of growing regulatory and legal challenges, but it also allows customers to integrate eDiscovery within their broader ECM landscapes.

Is This Good for eDOCS Customers?

As announced in the eDOCS 2009 roadmap late last year, Open Text continues to support its records management product eDOCS, including the U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2-STD certification last October and integration of BPM capabilities. The new announcement “furthers our commitment to Open Text eDOCS customers and expands on our leadership within the legal industry,” said Kirk Roberts, EVP & President of Integrated ECM Group. With additional eDiscovery support, eDOCS customers will be able to assess, collect, preserve and process electronically stored information that resides in Open Text eDOCS. In many cases, eDOCS is an organization’s system of record.

According to Robert Tennant, CEO of Recommind, “This is a natural extension of the Open Text eDOCS search capabilities we developed for our MindServer Search customers.”

Legal Market and Importance of eDiscovery, or Open Text Got You Covered

Open Text is certainly at the top of its game in the legal market. The company says that 70% of the AmLaw 100 firms are using Open Text’s content management solutions. It is only logical to continue embrace the customer base by providing a full range of applications and legal industry expertise to support law firms’ business practices. No one is going to say “no” to support throughout the legal matter lifecycle from client intake to final disposition.

With 2009 eDiscovery trends being discussed here and there, there’s a direct impact of these trends on Enterprise Content Management in the legal market.

The current global economical crisis has affected everyone, law firms included. The legal market (just like everyone else) is looking to cut down costs and improve efficiency. One way to do it is to engage better tools to get the job done. Most likely, if the solution is essential to operations and (somewhat) easy to implement, IT will invest in it even in these times of economic downturn.