Content Management Matters ™

Iron Mountain and ediscovery firm Stratify have enjoyed close links for some time. Now Iron Mountain's splashed the cash to acquire its former partner in a blockbuster US$ 158 million deal.

This marks the latest stage in Iron Mountain's comprehensive business evolution. Once regarded as little more than a records storage company, it's been spending big on acquisitions poised to help it become the industry-beating digital records management service provider.

No one's safe from the M&A bug. UK firm Autonomy has just agreed to purchase Belfast-based Meridio for US$ 40.8 million.

Meridio is a global provider of enterprise document and records management software. Earlier this month, it updated its proprietary offering for easier integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and MS Exchange.

Not a bad relationship for its new parent company to inherit.

Mountain View's PSS Systems, which specializes in legal holds and enterprise retention management, announced support for the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) XML standard.

One of the biggest headaches associated with eDiscovery is trying to manage loose electronic conversations taking place at or about the office. Email is hard enough, but instant messaging? Can you imagine...?

Thankfully, Open Text -- in partnership with FaceTime Communications -- have brought records management to the latter, hairier, medium. Meet the FaceTime IM Auditor.

Workshare, which operates mainly in secure content compliance, has just released its Enterprise Document Control Solution, which provides hosted services as well as clean integration with Microsoft Office.

The system enables content collaboration between enterprises, paired with tough security and an audit trail. (Good for eDiscovery risk management.)

Enterprise document management firm ColumbiaSoft is rolling out a series of collaboration tools fitted especially for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.

Have you been meticulously archiving your company's electronic correspondences like a good executive should? Hopefully you have, because e-mail recovery requests, which can be litigated or audit-related, or even end-user requested, have been on the rise, a new report from Osterman Research indicates.

Sponsored by archiving software vendor Fortiva, the study reports that businesses with more than 1,000 employees are averaging 37 legal discovery requests a year, 37 business requests, 25 audit requests, and more than 100 requests per year from end users.

Today at the 45th Annual Aerospace and Defense Contract Management Conference in California, Open Text announced its latest version of Livelink ECM - Contract Lifecycle Management.

The ECM firm built Contract Lifecycle Management to specifically address contact creation, negotiation, fulfillment and renewals issues.

This week Google announced the acquisition of Postini, a communications security and compliance company, for US$ 625 million.

Google has made inroads into the enterprise and higher education markets with notable additions to their Google Apps offering. But Postini's capabilities are an entirely different value proposition, making the search giant into a contender for the long, arduous battle with legal and corporate compliance concerns.

What's the worst that could happen when your records go unmanaged? Ask Microsoft, which spends an average of US$ 20 million for e-discovery per litigation, according to one company exec.

Student-run law publication Richmond Journal of Law and Technology (JOLT) is on a mission to rain lightning-bright clarity on the topic of Electronic Discovery (eDiscovery).

eDiscovery still got you down? Fear not, little enterprise. LiveOffice Corp debuts the Sentinel, an aptly-named web-based admin console that brings archived messages back from their long rest, right beneath your fingertips.

The globe-spanning CMS leaders at Interwoven recently announced the availability of the enhanced Interwoven Collaborative Document Management, which promises to increase the actual agility of an enterprise. How? The real question is, how else?

CYA Technologies, which provides recovery and replication solution to the Enterprise CMS world, today announced the release of CYA SmartRecovery for IBM FileNet P8. This is presently the only discrete recovery product that enables online recovery of structured information in just minutes, without shutting down one's system or taking applications offline.

Iron Mountain and Stratify have recently announced that they will be working together to provide Iron Mountain customers with Stratify's advanced electronic discovery capabilities.

Through their new alliance, users will be able to "leverage the Stratify Legal Discovery service using data that is stored and protected by Iron Mountain to efficiently analyze and review data during internal investigations as well as for litigation or regulatory discovery requests."