Edisovery News & Articles

IBM (news, site) announced fairly significant updates to its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) product families, including Business Process Management (BPM), eDiscovery and Archiving.

Apparently having heard the market scream for leaner, smarter product options and cost efficiency, the Big Blue has also introduced starter packs -- licensing-wise slimmed-down product versions targeted for smaller or departmental deployments -- for four of its ECM product lines.

No longer rumored in the halls of the ILTA conference, the intent of Enterprise CMS and storage vendor EMC (news, site) to acquire Kazeon (news, site) is now official. The unconfirmed deal size is at about US$ 75 million.

What does that mean for the two companies? How did the eDiscovery industry take the news? Let’s take a look at some first reactions and thoughts.

Last week Clearwell and Recommind released updates to their respective eDiscovery platforms. Not to be outdone, StoredIQ (news, site) is leading the charge this week with their own announcement.

StoredIQ now offers classification-based security, available immediately. Now users can grant access to potentially responsive data for audits, investigations and eDiscovery requests based on content classification, rather than only physical location, such as server, share or directory structures.

Digital Reef (news, site), fresh of their announcement of a new CEO, has announced a new partnership with Anacomp.

A provider of litigation support and businesses process services and solutions, Anacomp has formed a technology alliance with Digital Reef in an effort to offer advanced document connection, selection, reduction and analysis, as well as early case assessment. Their services aim to reduce eDiscovery costs, as well as to accelerate litigation processes and mitigate risks.

The release this week of AIIM’s (news, site) 70-page report entitled Recommended Practice: Analysis, Selection, and Implementation of Electronic Document Management Systems is going to answer a lot of questions about a lot of issues in the document management industry.

Principal amongst those questions are what constitutes a good, or bad, system, what kind of features should a good system have, and what features can it do without.

As an update to its 2001 best practice guidelines for the industry, this document does not set itself up as the definitive guide to all that is good (or bad). By way of introduction, it simply says it is for “anyone responsible for or interested in planning and implementing electronic content or document management systems”.

Managing unstructured data is a daunting task. Good thing Digital Reef is here to help. Today, they emerge from stealth mode after two years of developing their unstructured data management platform, achieving early customer traction under the name of Auraria Networks.

Digital Reef plans to manage unstructured and semi-structured data, that is data not already managed by database management systems, by helping large enterprises deal with key business issues that cannot be properly addressed using traditional solutions. Issues such as eDiscovery, data risk mitigation, knowledge reuse and strategic storage initiatives often require a great degree of scalability and performance. The longer left unchecked, the volume of data expands and thus costs companies both time and money and increases risk.

Digital Reef hopes not only that their new approach will garner interest, but that the current economic climate will help them capitalize on the importance of managing unstructured data as a means of saving money.

The skyrocketing cost of eDiscovery has made headlines recently with several court cases setting precedents in favor of supporting huge eDiscovery costs. For example, a January circuit court decision required the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight to spend $6 million (totaling 9 percent of its annual budget) to comply with a subpoena for electronic documents; and another recent district court ruling enforces preservation and production of metadata.

These rulings make taking control of eDiscovery costs more important than ever, and with many eDiscovery options available, corporate counsel and law firms are realizing that they can significantly reduce costs by bringing eDiscovery in-house.

But going in-house with eDiscovery cannot be over-complicated by having to fit technologies together that were never intended for the task of eDiscovery. Many “eDiscovery” solutions that vendors are selling include hard to manage and unnecessary processes, such as archiving, that are the result of vendors pushing legal features onto technology platforms that are inappropriate for what is needed. This adds unacceptable and unnecessary costs, weaker eDiscovery processes and a hard to manage infrastructure.

Recommind, a leader in search-powered information risk management (IRM) software, has released results from a new survey about collaboration (or lack thereof) between enterprise IT and legal departments.

The survey of senior IT managers at enterprises averaging more than 17,000 employees examined the importance of eDiscovery to the enterprise as a whole, the coordination of eDiscovery efforts between IT and legal departments and the roles that each department plays in setting corporate policies and making technology buying decisions.

The results? Disparaging.

US President Obama faces many challenges as he enters the executive office. His new administration is set to tackle the economy and many in the document management industry are looking to them for signs of increased regulation when it comes to records management and retention.

While such a topic may not seem like it would be a priority for the new president, those immersed in the industry know that good knowledge management is key to solving some of the biggest problems facing the country. Like the economic crisis.

PSS Systems has announced a new release of its Atlas Suite, aiming to cut down on unnecessary legal risks as well as discovery and data management costs. It has a familiar ring to many of the latest e-discovery releases and announcements.

In times of financial distress, legal risks and costs are wont to increase. However, if your company is wise enough to invest in the software that can lower their enterprise legal risk, while effectively improving their ediscovery process at a reduced cost, chances are the recessional legal blues will be generally avoided.

Earlier this fall Mimosa released a new solution -- email archiving -- as an addition to its NearPoint product. Tomorrow, they'll announce another new addition, aimed at classifying and tagging archived content.

Mimosa NearPoint Retention and Classification Option (RCO) is an add-on module to the Mimosa NearPoint platform that can help organizations lower storage costs and expedite eDiscovery by enabling automated management of user-generated content based on policy.

The eDiscovery industry has garnered a lot of attention. Whether it’s the costs associated with the process or the burden on lawyers to carry out discovery, companies need to implement an effective knowledge and records management model. Many vendors are stepping up to the plate and offer their strategies and services for how to best manage information.

Recently, IBM announced the launch of eDiscovery Analyzer, a new conceptual search and content analysis software that aims to help legal professionals accelerate eDiscovery.