tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82629113102171012082024-03-14T05:45:34.215-06:00The eDiscovery Paradigm ShiftThe rapid increase in the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and the emergence of the cloud have dramatically changed the fabric of the litigation and GRC lifecycles and caused a subsequent paradigm shift in eDiscovery and information governance.
This Blog is dedicated to providing a forum to discuss all of the evolving best practices and new technologies that are emerging in an effort to support this new paradigm.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.comBlogger226125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-24498136691733489202012-08-12T14:17:00.000-06:002012-08-12T16:06:22.440-06:00The Legal Profession Found the Twenty-First Century: Ignorance is bliss no longer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As a profession, lawyers and bar associations
are notoriously slow to change. Last week, the American Bar Association
considered and adopted updates to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct that
govern lawyers. The legal profession has found its way into
the Twenty-First Century and clients will benefit.</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
The American Bar Association’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 filed its first six
recommendations with the ABA House of Delegates on May 7, 2012. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>These recommendations are the result
of a three-year study of how “globalization<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and
technology are transforming the practice of law and how the regulation of
lawyers should be updated in light of those developments.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The Commission’s recommendations have
been split into two sets of proposals with the first considered by the ABA
House of Delegates at its August 2012 meeting. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The other recommendations will be
considered in February 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
The ABA stated that “technology and globalization have transformed the practice
of law in ways the profession could not anticipate in 2002. Since then,
communications and commerce have become increasingly globalized and
technology-based. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>In August
2009, then-ABA President Carolyn B. Lamm created the Commission on Ethics 20/20
to tackle the ethical and regulatory challenges and opportunities arising from
these 21st<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>century realities. She
charged the Commission with conducting a plenary assessment of the ABA Model
Rules of Professional Conduct and related ABA policies, and directed it to
follow these principles: protecting the public; preserving the core
professional values of the American legal profession; and maintaining a strong,
independent, and self-regulated profession.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">August 2012 Adopted Changes</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rule 1.1 requires that a lawyer
provide “competent representation to a client,” which “requires the legal
knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the
representation.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
Comment to Rule 1.1 was amended to state that a lawyer’s competence must now
include knowledge of “the benefits and risks associated with relevant
technology.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>No longer can
a lawyer claim ignorance. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
fundamental principle of competence now requires a lawyer to know and keep
apprised of how technology impacts her practice and her representation of the
client.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The ABA added the following
language to Rule 1.6 which governs a lawyer’s duty to keep information
confidential: <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>“A lawyer
shall make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>unauthorized disclosure of, or
unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a
client.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>In Comment 16, the
ABA clarified that this new language in the rule means:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“The unauthorized access to, or
the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, information relating to the
representation of a client does not constitute a violation of paragraph (c) if
the lawyer has made reasonable efforts to prevent the access or disclosure.
Factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of the lawyer’s
efforts include, but are not limited to, the sensitivity of the information,
the likelihood of disclosure if additional safeguards are not employed, the
cost of employing additional safeguards, the difficulty of implementing the
safeguards, and the extent to which the safeguards adversely affect the
lawyer’s ability to represent clients (e.g., by making a device or important
piece of software excessively difficult to use). A client may require the lawyer
to implement special security measures not required by this Rule or may give
informed consent to forgo security measures that would otherwise be required by
this Rule. Whether a lawyer may be required to take additional steps to
safeguard a client’s information in order to comply with other law, such as
state and federal laws that govern data privacy or that impose notification
requirements upon the loss of, or unauthorized access to, electronic
information, is beyond the scope of these Rules.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In its amendments to Rule
4.4(b), the ABA concluded that electronically stored information should be
treated like other documents. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Now,
“[a] lawyer who receives a document or electronically stored information
relating to the representation of the lawyer’s client and knows or reasonably
should know that the document or electronically stored information was
inadvertently sent shall promptly notify the sender.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In Comment 2 to Rule 4.4, the ABA added that “A document or electronically
stored information is inadvertently sent when it is accidentally transmitted,
such as when an email or letter is misaddressed or a document or electronically
stored information is accidentally included with information that was
intentionally transmitted.” </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Metadata”
is included in the types of electronically stored information that may be
inadvertently disclosed. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">However,
metadata in electronic documents "creates an obligation under this Rule
only if the receiving lawyer knows or reasonably should know that the metadata
was inadvertently sent to the receiving lawyer.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The ABA
also tackled issues relating to Outsourcing and Technology and Client
Development. Those issues will be addressed in another article.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<strong><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Conclusion</span></strong></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
While the ABA’s Model Rules are not binding on lawyer until adopted by the
states, the influence of changes to the Model Rules cannot be overstated.
Most states usually adopt some variety of changes made to the Model Rules
of Professional Conduct. Thus, look for each state to address these
recommendations over the next year. There will likely be some healthy and
interesting debates to come. Stay tuned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
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</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-70601680435689587412012-08-10T09:11:00.000-06:002012-08-10T09:16:01.591-06:00Is it Safe to Store Proprietary Data in DropBox?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjShaNKI3zUmygdV7R8HCrURH1_wO9TfBjPXEYUnzq1MFjKXtAg0Zg3Qm2cDEhIkxQXlFWeqHmUXapWOoDgEAKhwWgoRQrxYH3mGcyQu1vA3_a3Ysa4xXJEWRWdOC2xtOU9JySUqhq1Ju-/s1600/burglar-computer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjShaNKI3zUmygdV7R8HCrURH1_wO9TfBjPXEYUnzq1MFjKXtAg0Zg3Qm2cDEhIkxQXlFWeqHmUXapWOoDgEAKhwWgoRQrxYH3mGcyQu1vA3_a3Ysa4xXJEWRWdOC2xtOU9JySUqhq1Ju-/s320/burglar-computer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Over
the last 5 years, the volume of information that is shared and/or stored in the
public cloud due to the increased use of social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has soared. According to a report called
"</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dcig.com/redirect.php?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com%2FTheGrowthofSocialMedia.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: #6699cc;">The Growth of Social Media</span></b></a></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">", compiled by </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dcig.com/redirect.php?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.searchenginejournal.com%2F" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: #6699cc;">Search Engine Journal</span></b></a></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Facebook has in excess
of 640 million registered users with over 7 billion pieces of content shared
weekly.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Twitter has in excess
of 299 million registered users with over 95 million tweets per day.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">LinkedIn has in excess
of 100 million registered users.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
risks associated with these popular social media platforms are well
documented. Fortunately, businesses worldwide are quickly evolving their
understanding of the risks of what information should and should not be
communicated or shared by employees via the various social media platforms.
However, these same businesses may be at an even greater risk of exposing
proprietary and confidential information by their employees through the use of
public cloud storage platforms such as <b><a href="http://www.dcig.com/redirect.php?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2F" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6699cc;">Dropbox</span></a></b>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At
the Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVeDR) held July 22-25, 2012 in Monterey,
California, I had the pleasure of moderating several panel discussions on cloud
computing featuring industry experts in eDiscovery, Internet security and the
legal risks associated with storing data in a public cloud. The consensus
from the panels was that storing any data in the public cloud poised both a
security and a legal risk. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
recommendations from these experts regarding what data businesses should put in
the public cloud varied from "<i>don't put any data in the public cloud</i>"
to "<i>don't put any proprietary or confidential data in the public cloud</i>."
However, regardless of what the experts say, the operational efficiencies and
financial incentives of cloud computing are just too great for businesses to
ignore. But, that doesn't mean that business owners should ignore the
facts.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
The Experts are Cautious</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
consensus among the CVeDR cloud panel experts was that there was probably more
data stored in Dropbox than most businesses realized and that it was a
potential source of risk. Several of the lawyers on the CVeDR panels indicated
that a business could potentially lose its claims to properly protecting trade
secrets and other proprietary information by merely storing data in storage
technologies like Dropbox. The security experts on the CVeDR panel
contended that there were still some very worrisome security issues with
storage technologies like Dropbox.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
DropBox Says</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According
to its website, Dropbox contends that they use modern encryption methods to
both transfer and store your data such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and
AES-256 bit encryption. In addition Dropbox contends that the Dropbox
website and client software have been hardened against attacks from hackers,
that public folders are not browsable or searchable and public files are only
viewable by people who have a link to the file(s).</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
What Can Happen</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, <b><i>Dropbox
actually uses Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3)</i></b> for storage and
therefore they really don't even have direct control over the security of the
files that you store. The potential problems with Cloud Service
Providers (CSPs) such as Aamazon S3 was very evident this summer as a severe
storm that rumbled across the Eastern U.S, leaving nine people dead and
millions without power, also disrupted an Amazon Web Services data center,
affecting service for social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Netflix,
which host their services at Amazon's data centers.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In another alarming
security development for AWS, on Monday August 6, 2012, Amazon changed its
customer privacy policies closing security gaps that were exploited in the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/"><span style="color: blue;">identity hacking of Wired reporter Mat Honan</span></a></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> on Friday. As posted on the
Wired.com website in an article by </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/author/nathanog/"><span style="color: blue;">Nathan Olivarez-Giles</span></a> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">titled, "<a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/amazon-changes-policy-wont-add-new-credit-cards-to-accounts-over-the-phone/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Amazon Quietly Closes Security Hole
After Journalist’s Devastating Hack</span></a>", previously, Amazon
allowed people to call in and change the email address associated with an
Amazon account or add </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/amazon-changes-policy-wont-add-new-credit-cards-to-accounts-over-the-phone/"><span style="color: blue;">a credit card</span></a></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> number to an Amazon account as long as the caller could
identify him or herself by name, email address and mailing address — three bits
of personal information that are easily found online.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Nathan Olivarez-Giles reports in this article that on Tuesday August 7,
2012, that</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amazon handed down to its customer service
department a policy change that no longer allows people to call in and change
account settings, such as </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/amazon-changes-policy-wont-add-new-credit-cards-to-accounts-over-the-phone/"><span style="color: blue;">credit cards</span></a></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> or email addresses associated with its user accounts.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Amazon officials weren’t available for comment on the security changes, but
during phone calls to Amazon customer service on Tuesday, representatives told
us that the changes were sent out this morning and put in place for “your
security.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
The security gap was used by hackers, one of whom identified himself as a
19-year-old going by the name “Phobia,” to gain access to Honan’s Amazon
account on Friday. Once Phobia and another hacker gained access to Honan’s
Amazon account, they were able to view the last four digits of a <a href="http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/amazon-changes-policy-wont-add-new-credit-cards-to-accounts-over-the-phone/"><span style="color: blue;">credit card</span></a> linked to the account.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
The hackers then used those four digits to trick Apple customer service into
thinking it was dealing with Honan. Apple customer service then gave the
hackers a temporary password into Honan’s Apple ID, which the hackers used to
wipe his iPhone, iPad and MacBook, and gain access to a number of email
accounts as well as his Twitter account.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
We discovered Amazon’s policy change on Tuesday after we failed to replicate
the exploits used on Honan this weekend. Amazon declined comment on the
security hole on Monday, and has since failed to return repeated phone calls
from Wired about the vulnerability.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
regards to these cloud storage vendors b</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">eing able to keep data secure. Dropbox
confirmed Tuesday, July 31, 2012 that its users had been experiencing a spam
onslaught, and reported that the issue was tracked to employee. "<i>Our
investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other
websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts. We've
contacted these users and have helped them protect their accounts</i>,"
said Aditya Agarwal, VP of engineering at Dropbox, Tuesday in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dcig.com/redirect.php?site=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.dropbox.com%2Findex.php%2Fsecurity-update-new-features" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: #6699cc;">blog post</span></b></a></span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However,
many of the spam attacks were ultimately traced to a <b><i>password-reuse
problem</i></b> that existed within Dropbox itself. "<i>A stolen
password was also used to access an employee Dropbox account containing a
project document with user email addresses</i>," said Agarwal. "<i>We
believe this improper access is what led to the spam. We're sorry about this,
and have put additional controls in place to help make sure it doesn't happen
again.</i>" Those controls will include a page that lets users review the
login history related to their account, mechanisms for identifying suspicious
activity, as well as two-factor authentication.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
is no doubt that weather related issues have knocked out corporate data centers
and passwords have been compromised behind the firewalls of even the largest
corporations in the world. However, when this happens, the
corporate stakeholders at least have someone to hold accountable. When
these types of things happen with a cloud storage provider such as DropBox, the
DropBox Service Level Agreement (<i><a href="http://www.dcig.com/redirect.php?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2Fdmca%23terms" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: #6699cc;">SLA</span></b></a></i>) protects
DropBox from any direct responsibility or damages.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recommendation</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moving
data to the public cloud is already happening at an accelerating rate.
And, the operational efficiencies and financial benefits are just too great for
this trend to slow down. Therefore, even though it is a fair question to
ask if it is safe to move your data to a public cloud, a more realistic
question might be, "<i>What do I need to know and what do I need to do to
ensure that my data will be safe once I move it to the public cloud?</i>"</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
input and guidance from the CVeDR cloud panel experts, my recommendations are
as follows:</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Don't move any
business data to the public cloud that is confidential, proprietary or is the
essence of valuable corporate Intellectual Property (IP).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Have your legal
department read the providers Service Level Agreement (SLA).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Develop and/or follow
corporate data retention policies in regards to the data you store in the
public cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Develop and/or follow
corporate password and other security policies in regards to the data you store
in the public cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Talk to the cloud storage
provider about eDiscovery and develop a joint plan for how it is going to be
accomplished and how much it is going to cost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt -5.65pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt -5.65pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Storing data in the public
cloud is inexpensive and very efficient. Just be aware that there are
risks that need to be mitigated and addressed.</span></div>
Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-43501040867347673342012-08-02T16:54:00.000-06:002012-08-02T18:36:15.987-06:00StoredIQ Reinvents Itself in a Big Data Way<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUbzP2AmXROruiy4xzozCN35I85V_Tu4qzRUgyqLGf9UxCghWvrP5pniU7a1FPF0cuQAIPIh1D4P5Khd36kiDOZT4Ywd9MjM4nRei2TuuBB1zD0WNHMDG0ieiwAOT1n2BJya3rnL2p3GV/s1600/StoredIQ+Reinvents+Itself.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUbzP2AmXROruiy4xzozCN35I85V_Tu4qzRUgyqLGf9UxCghWvrP5pniU7a1FPF0cuQAIPIh1D4P5Khd36kiDOZT4Ywd9MjM4nRei2TuuBB1zD0WNHMDG0ieiwAOT1n2BJya3rnL2p3GV/s320/StoredIQ+Reinvents+Itself.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Over the past five (5) years<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.storediq.com/" target="_blank">StoredIQ</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>has
had more than its fair share of ups and downs. Founded in 2001,
venture backed StoredIQ began to establish itself as a "next
generation" player in the eDiscovery software market around 2005.
However, after being overlooked for a large consolidation move in 2009,
StoredIQ seemed to loose its way and couldn't figure out if they were
in the Information Governance market competing with Autonomy,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.ibm.com/" target="_blank">IBM<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></span></a>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.symantec.com/" target="_blank">Symantec<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></span></a>or in
the eDiscovery Early Case Assessment (ECA) market competing with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.clearwellsystems.com/" target="_blank">Clearwell Systems</a>.<br />
<br />
2010 became a pivotal year as they brought on<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4933495" target="_blank">Phil
Myers</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>as the new CEO.
With 29 years of experience in the technology industry and having managed
three successful start-up companies, Phil made adjustments in personal, mission
and strategy and got StoredIQ back in the game.<br />
<br />
In 2011, Phil hired<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=92696" target="_blank">Tom Bishop</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>as The new Chief Technology Officer
(CTO). Bishop was the former chief technology officer of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/" target="_blank">IBM Tivoli</a>. After
Tivoli, Bishop served as CTO of VIEO, Inc., where he was named “Chief
Technology Officer of the Year” by InfoWorld magazine vice president and
CTO at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.bmc.com/" target="_blank">BMC Software</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>where he was responsible for product
vision and direction, including advancing Atrium, the company’s innovative
open-architected foundation for Business Service Management solutions. Tom was the right technology leader at the right time to figure out what the market wanted StoredIQ to be and how to get them there technically.<br />
<br />
Throughout 2011, StoredIQ executives met with customers, prospects and other
industry thought leaders to try and establish their corporate identity.
More importantly, they tried to figure out if they were going to build
product to compete in the Information Governance or eDiscovery markets.
Where they ended up may surprise some of you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Named by Gartner as a 2012 "Cool
Vendor" in Risk Management, Privacy and Compliance, StoredIQ ended up
in the middle of "Big Data" with its new mission to enable
organizations to actively manage their vast and ever-increasing amounts of
unstructured data. So, with a slight twist on the approach and who they
are now selling to, StoredIQ actually ended up in both Information Governance
and eDiscovery. You see, at the root of any Information Governance or
eDiscovery project or process is the ability to identify, collect, index and
analyze Big Data. And, that's what StoredIQ is now doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I had the pleasure of spending an hour today
with Phil Myers, StoredIQ's CEO and <span class="n"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/goog_102392298"><span class="given-name">Amir</span> </a></span></span><span class="family-name"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=1994138" target="_blank">Jaibaji</a>,
Vice President of Product Management for StoredIQ. They walked me through
their "new strategy" and gave me a quick demo of <a href="http://www.storediq.com/applications/dataiq">DataIQ</a>, their recently
announced </span></span><span style="background: white;">data analytics
module that provides users with an exceptionally unique visual
overview and approach to analyze unstructured data. It’s very visual,
fast and provides an abundance of information that you probably didn’t even
know that you had about your data. Whether you are an analyst in the
Information Technology (IT) department managing storage utilization, a risk
manager looking for “open shares” in SharePoint or a General Counsel trying to
forecast the cost of pending litigation, DataIQ is just what you have been
hoping for. It was impressive to say the least and if it is any
indication of where Myers and Bishop have taken StoredIQ, they have not only
reinvented themselves, they had established themselves as a formidable player
in the Big Data analytics market.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Over the next couple of
weeks, I plan to spend more time with StoredIQ and will report on what I
find. My expectations are very high.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-70828908320641520142012-07-31T21:19:00.000-06:002012-08-01T09:01:08.029-06:00Professionalism and eDiscovery: Going beyond ethical considerations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgcJI5-d1NViZ48pOV1YT-k_86pPCAGCHDQhm7lId9pkAd84vrlMITQCs84vfb939BbgmTxiOuTypnEfhwEo3qO1LtyvuwMCNT8Qvh8_MrM5HHbY2k5bjdu-7Qphn3tC0jAlGY0fMPZU/s1600/Sky.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgcJI5-d1NViZ48pOV1YT-k_86pPCAGCHDQhm7lId9pkAd84vrlMITQCs84vfb939BbgmTxiOuTypnEfhwEo3qO1LtyvuwMCNT8Qvh8_MrM5HHbY2k5bjdu-7Qphn3tC0jAlGY0fMPZU/s320/Sky.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
During the last few years, there has been much discussion, and
even some interesting debates, about ethical eDiscovery issues. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Much focus has been on the topics of
duties to preserve records, duties to disclose records, and the state Rules of
Professional Conduct. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>But,
I believe it is not sufficient to consider only the ethical issues
involved. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We must also
focus on the professionalism of eDiscovery. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Some of these professionalism issues
are raised in discovery generally, but others are unique to eDiscovery.<br /><br /><span style="text-align: justify;">I believe it nearly universally true that
the most professional and ethical lawyers are usually the best lawyers. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">They have either long ago abandoned,
or never acquired a taste for, unprofessional conduct. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">They have mastered their craft and
find no use for unprofessional behavior. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">The same could be said for business
leaders; if they are not professional, others would rather do a business deal
with someone else.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /><b><br />Attorney Civility Rules</b></span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">Some states have developed civility rules
that are guidelines only. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">These
rules are not intended to be enforced against lawyer conduct the way that the
Rules of Professional Conduct are enforced. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">However, these are excellent
guidelines for ensuring that lawyers maintain professionalism in eDiscovery.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span><span style="text-align: justify;">Included in New York’s Standards of
Civility rules are standards are obligations to be “courteous and civil in all
professional dealings with other persons.” </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">This includes a requirement that
lawyers “should act in a civil manner regardless of the ill feelings that their
clients may have toward others” and “[l]awyers can disagree without being
disagreeable.”<br /></span><span style="text-align: justify;">The New York Standards of Civility also
state that “[a] lawyer should not use any aspect of the litigation process,
including discovery and motion practice, as a means of harassment or for the
purpose of unnecessarily prolonging or increasing litigation expenses.” </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">ESI requests are particularly prone to
abuse in this area as it can be used to harass and increase litigation expenses.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /><b><br />Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned
In Kindergarten</b></span><span style="text-align: justify;">.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">In Robert Fulghum’s popular essay about
what he learned in kindergarten, he discussed a few basic principles that both
lawyers and businesses should abide by. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Included
among those are basic professional principles like “share everything,” “play
fair,” “don’t hit people,” “clean up your own mess,” “don’t take things that
aren’t yours,” “say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody,” and “live a balanced
life.” </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">A healthy dose of
these basic ideas would serve the lawyer well in eDiscovery practice. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Although the pressing matter may seem
most important at the time, conduct will create a reputation, and an
unprofessional reputation is difficult to lose once it is gained. You can play
fair while vigorously representing your client.</span><br />
<b style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br />What Professionalism Should Govern
eDiscovery Practice?</b><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">In eDiscovery circles, there is much
discussion taking place about “proportionality.” </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Essentially, this is an issue of
reasonableness. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">I believe
reasonableness is also an issue of professionalism. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Recall that the scope of discovery is
what is “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.”
Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 26(b)(1). </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">By
narrowly tailoring requests to what is reasonable will enhance eDiscovery
professionalism. eDiscovery costs should never be used as a way to bludgeon the
opposing party into submission. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;"> If
ESI the scope of a request can be narrowed without harming a client’s case,
then it should be narrowed.</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;"> The
New York Rules of Civility state that “[a] lawyer should avoid discovery that
is not necessary to obtain facts or perpetuate testimony or that is designed to
place an undue burden or expense on a party.”</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">While many crack jokes about the
professionalism and ethics of lawyers, most lawyers I know take both ethics and
professionalism very seriously. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">I
believe that the best lawyers are not only ethical but highly professional as well. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Some clients act professionally as
well, while others may will push for unprofessional practices. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">It is the lawyer’s job to reign in his
or her client. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">While a
lawyer must zealously advocate for a client, no case or client is ever worth
squandering one’s reputation. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Never
allow a client to cause you to do something unethical or unprofessional.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">Lawyers involved in eDiscovery should
strive for not only meeting the basic Rules of Professional Conduct but also
the Rules of Civility. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">By
doing so, we serve the judicial system, our colleagues and our clients with
integrity.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-1548905391510458532012-07-31T13:58:00.003-06:002012-07-31T13:59:21.214-06:00X1 Discovery and the National White Collar Crime Center Partner to Fight Cybercrime with Cutting Edge Support and Training for Internet and Social Media Investigations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEs19i-56P9NVsAeP7d3oUSGgS2XagclMYui3uKCKpqTLa18k-PsVFh3yeTI0rB4xb7BbQyIc5jpZXZdcUSHJk4vZTg1hPKBhBsi5Sk54lxVl4yWpEI_2laZSrqqRg_7uOsKWVvtmBjs70/s1600/NWC3Pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEs19i-56P9NVsAeP7d3oUSGgS2XagclMYui3uKCKpqTLa18k-PsVFh3yeTI0rB4xb7BbQyIc5jpZXZdcUSHJk4vZTg1hPKBhBsi5Sk54lxVl4yWpEI_2laZSrqqRg_7uOsKWVvtmBjs70/s320/NWC3Pic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Potential evidence of white collar crimes is becoming more prevalent in social media platforms such as <a href="http://www.facebook.com/" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter </a>and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>. In fact, industry analysts indicate that electronic evidence generated from social networks is relevant to just about every criminal and civil legal matter and therefore must be routinely addressed by law enforcement, regulatory agencies, law firms, and corporate risk professionals.<br />
<br />
In a recent LexisNexis survey of 1200 law enforcement professionals focusing on the rising prominence of social media evidence, 67 percent of respondents believed social media evidence helps solve crimes more quickly. However, the respondents also pointed to lack of training and technical familiarity as preventing their more widespread access to social media evidence.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.x1discovery.com/" target="_blank">X1 Discovery</a>, the leader in software solutions for social media and website evidence search and collection, along with the <a href="http://www.nw3c.org/" target="_blank">National White Collar Crime Center</a> (NW3C), an internationally recognized leader in education and support in the prevention and prosecution of high tech crime, have announced a <b><i>strategic partnership to provide training curriculum and support to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies worldwide</i></b>, as well as to legal, corporate discovery and risk professionals. The partnership will focus on promoting best practices and advanced techniques for website and social media evidence collection and analysis, based upon the X1 Social Discovery software.<br />
<br />
This curriculum will provide best practices and new methods to collect, search, preserve and manage social media evidence from social media networking sites and other websites in a scalable, instantaneous and forensically sound manner. Participants will learn about specific cases involving critical social media data; find out how to collect and index thousands of social media items in minutes; understand and identify key metadata unique to social media; learn how to better authenticate social media evidence in a safe and defensible manner; and more. The X1 Social Discovery software is designed to effectively address social media content from the leading social media networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, it can crawl, capture and instantly search content from any website. Unlike archiving and image capture solutions, X1 Social Discovery provides for a “matter-centric” workflow and defensible chain of custody from search and collection through production in searchable native format, while preserving critical metadata not possible through image capture, printouts, or raw data archival of RSS feeds.<br />
<br />
The use of social media as the preferred form of communications for all business both legal and illegal is going to grow at an accelerating rate. Therefore, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies worldwide, as well as to legal and corporate HR and risk professionals are going to have to be prepared to collect and analyze this electronic information. The partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and X1 Discovery is definitely a ray of hope for those organization that are in desperate need of assistance to deal with this growing problem.<br />
<br />
<br />
You may view the press release on Reuters announcing this partnership at:
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/idUS154421+31-Jul-2012+BW20120731">http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/idUS154421+31-Jul-2012+BW20120731</a><br />
<br />
For more information about X1 Discovery, you can visit their website at: <a href="http://www.x1discovery.com/">www.x1discovery.com</a>. For more information about the National White Collar Crime Center, you can visit: <a href="http://www.nw3c.org/">http://www.nw3c.org/</a><br />
<br />Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-52602991684337881012012-07-24T13:28:00.000-06:002012-08-03T10:05:08.726-06:002012 Early Case Assessment Buyer's Guide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ryMedAP3QRFgboDzKAgkOcB6QIGIt8mSjWg9RByHa_mXBJoj7-aDB4dcNpZLl7RJhW7XlRrOncjPFME-UsJTZ_a5bcfX0xzGq9_ilCFe6GZlg35RPxCcQ4l1nBAjuh0kBj_qrIrsOZ6-/s1600/2012ECABuyersGuidePic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ryMedAP3QRFgboDzKAgkOcB6QIGIt8mSjWg9RByHa_mXBJoj7-aDB4dcNpZLl7RJhW7XlRrOncjPFME-UsJTZ_a5bcfX0xzGq9_ilCFe6GZlg35RPxCcQ4l1nBAjuh0kBj_qrIrsOZ6-/s320/2012ECABuyersGuidePic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This past week <a href="http://www.dcig.com/" target="_blank">DCIG</a> published the 2012 Early Case Assessment Buyer's Guide. As the lead analyst on this guide, I will be posting my thoughts and comments about the development of the guide and the results over the next couple of weeks.<br /><br /><i><b>Please note that you can register for an August 9, 2012 Webinar where I will talk about how we developed the guide and will also demonstrate the online interactive version of the guide. <a href="https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/271336737" target="_blank">Click Here</a> to register.</b></i><br />
<br />
First of all, I wanted to thank <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=2781366" target="_blank">Joshua Konkle</a> from <a href="http://www.dcig.com/" target="_blank">DCIG </a>for inviting me to participate in the development of this guide. Joshua and I spent hundreds of hours talking with Early Case Assessment (ECA) users to gather input to develop the survey questions and ranking criteria. We then spend on told hours with the product managers from the vendors covered in the guide, processing the results and writing the report. It was a very educational yet rewarding exercise that I look forward to repeating it every12 months for years to come.<br />
<br />
Beyond the ECA platform rankings, there is a lot of very valuable information in this guide in regards to the state of the eDiscovery market. However, I can't comment on all of it at one time,. Therefore, in this initial post, I will talk about some of the thought that went into developing the survey, the ranking criteria and release the list of the ECA tools in order of ranking.<br />
<br />
Historically, technology industry reports have taken into consideration vendor size based on revenue and installed based and other criteria that Joshua and I considered very subjective such as feedback from customers. DCIG has historically attempted to be very <b><i>objective</i></b> in the development of its other buyers guides. I like to call this the Dragnet approach as they have been steadfast to collect "just the facts". As such, Joshua and I followed a similar philosophy with the 2012 ECA Buyer's Guide. <i><b>We only wanted to collect verify and report on the facts of what these ECA tools could do and didn't take into consideration what customers thought or how much revenue the vendor generated.</b></i><br />
<br />
In addition, DCIG has also historically taken a very bold approach of actually ranking the platforms in their guides as opposed to lumping them into conceptual categories that provide little to no value to perspective buyers. Joshua and I followed the same strategy with the 2012 ECA Buyer's Guide. And, although we did place ECA platforms into categories such as <b><i>Recommended, Excellent, Good</i></b> and <b><i>Basic</i></b>, we did in fact rank the platforms from 1-29. As a side not, the fact that we actually ranked the ECA tools provided for some interesting and frank discussions with many of the vendors that participated. I plan to comment on some of these rankings in later posts. However, as a teaser, potential buyers need to note that just because a particular ECA tool was ranked very low doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a perfect for your specific ECA requirements. That's the beauty of the guide and more specifically the value of the <b><i>Interactive Buyer's Guide </i></b>(IBG) as it enables users to analyze all 29 ECA tools based on any of the 300 data point and choose those ECA tools that meet their specific criteria. Please note that I will be talking about the IBG at length in future Blog posts and will also be demonstrating the IBG in multiple <a href="https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/271336737" target="_blank">webinars </a>over the next month.<br />
<br />
Based on our personal experiences with ECA tools and view of where the ECA is going along with discussions with ECA users and a cross section of the ECA tool vendors, Joshua and I placed a heightened focus on ECA tools with the following features delivered as an integrated holistic platform:<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Data Mapping</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Analysis of enterprise ESI </span><span style="background-color: white;">before collections</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Real-time collection of enterprise ESI</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Integration with enterprise </span><span style="background-color: white;">archiving systems</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Ability to process social media ESI</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Legal Hold</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Workflow management</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Project management</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Next generation search</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">First Pass Review</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Next generation user interface</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Information dashboard</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">SaaS delivery option</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br />
Based on how the participating ECA vendors answered the survey and taking into consideration these criteria, Joshua and I ranked the ECA tools for the 2012 ECA Buyer's Guide as follows:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Guidance Software EnCase eDiscovery</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Exterro Fusion eDiscovery</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">ZyLAB eDiscovery Bundle</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Orcatec Document Decisioning Suite</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">GGO DigitalWarRoom</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Symantec Clearwell</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Autonomy Investigator and Early Case Assessment (ECA)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">StoredIQ DiscoveryIQ</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">NextPoint Discovery Cloud</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">NUIX Nuix Enterprise Discovery</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Kroll Ontrack Ontrack Inview</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">EMC SourceOne</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Kroll Ontrack Verve Review</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">AccessData Group AD eDiscovery</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Rational Retention Central Retention Server (CRS)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Kroll Ontrack Ontrack Advanceview</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Digital Reef Advanced ECA 4.0</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Equivalent Data NeddleFinder</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">AccessData Group ECA product (AD ECA)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Orange Legal Technologies OneO</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Kroll Ontrack Verve EDA</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Recommind Axcelerate ECA and Collection</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">X1 Discovery X1 Rapid Discovery; X1 Social Discovery</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">InterLegis, Inc. Discovery360</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">AccessData Group Summation</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">kCura Relativity</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Venio Systems Venio FPR</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Orange Legal Technologies Purple Box</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Equivio Equivio Zoom</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<br />
Please note that users can download a full copy of the 2012 ECA Buyers Guide at: <a href="http://www.dcig.com/buyersguides" style="background-color: white;">http://www.dcig.com/buyersguides</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;">A couple of things to keep in mind in regards to this ranking:</span><br />
<ul><span style="background-color: white;">
<li><span style="background-color: white;">These rankings are based upon our view of features that are important in the ECA market which may or may not match your view of what's important.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">In many cases the difference in the overall points that </span><span style="background-color: white;">separate </span><span style="background-color: white;">our rankings over 5 to 10 spots may be as few as 5 to 10 points. And, these points could represent connections to data types or support for specific kinds of search technology (e.g. conceptual search vs. keyword) that may not be important to your organization.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">It is also possible that the ECA tools represented in this guide have released major updates that were not reflected in the final rankings. Joshua and I had to set a cut-off date and unfortunately some of these updates </span><span style="background-color: white;">occurred </span><span style="background-color: white;">after the cut-off. As an example, </span><a href="http://www.krollontrack.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Kroll Ontrack</a><span style="background-color: white;"> has made some major enhancements to its ECA product line in the just the last 60 days.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">There are some very impressive ECA tools such as </span><a href="http://www.equivio.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Equivio Zoom</a><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://veniosystems.com/new/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Venio FPR</a><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">X1 Rapid Discovery</a><span style="background-color: white;"> and </span><a href="http://www.orangelt.us/info/2010/08/08/the-oneo-discovery-platform/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">OneO</a><span style="background-color: white;"> that are ranked lower in the guide (because they are more focused in their approach to ECA) but in fact may be the perfect solution to your specific requirements. As an example, I just recently ranked Equivio Zoom as one of the <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.in/2012/07/top-five-ediscovery-technologies-to.html" target="_blank">Top Five eDiscovery Technologies</a> to watch in the second half of 2012.</span></li>
</span></ul>
<span style="background-color: white;">
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;">Our mission with the inaugural Early Case Assessment Buyers’ Guide was to provide users with a valuable and <span style="background-color: white;">ongoing source of objective and unbiased knowledge to compare the features and functionality of ECA software. We included vendors regardless of size or installed base and we went to great lengths to be as objective as possible in the scoring and ranking of the ECA software reviewed in this Guide. If anyone has any questions and or comments about this guide I would encourage you to contact me or Joshua as we would be more than happy to discuss our approach and the results.<br /><br />In my next post, I will go into more detail regarding the thoughts behind our criteria and rankings.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;">
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</div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-68022450257670147752012-07-13T10:50:00.002-06:002012-07-13T10:51:45.902-06:00Five Initial Steps to Meet the Governance, Risk and Compliance Obligations Brought on by Today's Big Data File Stores<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7FafOeXsSOB7MKpHRuXI930leWAIuDuQXgl3iR547kGRTbuTNI1EhYRY3ZriN-Nc_6554dWw8eR9bCvBJSwmx1cGVbA5Jr8zgoWlcnQ7-DiGHArXzI5XUBzMxxTDE3RGQH6sTx1DKPyZ/s1600/5tipsforGRC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7FafOeXsSOB7MKpHRuXI930leWAIuDuQXgl3iR547kGRTbuTNI1EhYRY3ZriN-Nc_6554dWw8eR9bCvBJSwmx1cGVbA5Jr8zgoWlcnQ7-DiGHArXzI5XUBzMxxTDE3RGQH6sTx1DKPyZ/s320/5tipsforGRC.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The accelerating increase in the amount of unstructured
Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is leaving IT organizations struggling
with how to store and manage all of this new information. Aside from just
providing the underlying storage infrastructure to host this amount of data,
companies are also faced with the task of properly managing their Big Data file
stores to meet existing governance, risk and compliance obligations. To do so,
there are five steps they can take now to position their organization to meet
them.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">
<br />
According to a 2010 </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf"><span style="color: blue;">report</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> by IDC, the amount of information created, captured or
replicated has exceeded available storage for the first time since 2007. The
size of the digital universe this year will be tenfold what it was just five
years earlier. According to this same IDC report, the volume of unstructured
ESI is expected to grow at over 60% CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate).<br />
<br />
According to Forrester Research and as </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/07/05/best-practices-for-managing-big-data/"><span style="color: blue;">reported</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> in an article that appeared on Forbes website last week:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The average organization will grow their data by 50
percent in the coming year<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Overall corporate data will grow by a staggering 94
percent<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Database systems will grow by 97 percent<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Server backups for disaster recovery and continuity
will expand by 89 percent<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Overseeing the expansion of storage space and ensuring that
the data is protected has become a minor part of the overall task of Big Data
file storage and management. Business stakeholders and the Information
Technology (IT) organizations from enterprises of all sizes and across all
industries must now face a list of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)
regulations to which they have to legally comply or face potentially fatal financial
penalties to the enterprise. <br />
<br />
The most obvious laws to which they are subject include:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sarbanes-Oxley (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.sec.gov/about/laws.shtml#sox2002"><span style="color: blue;">SOX</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.html"><span style="color: blue;">HIPAA</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Gramm-Leach-Bliley (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://banking.senate.gov/conf/"><span style="color: blue;">GLBA</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Federal Information Security Management Act (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SMA/fisma/index.html"><span style="color: blue;">FISMA</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Consumer Information Protection Laws<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.uscourts.gov/RulesAndPolicies/FederalRulemaking/RulesAndForms.aspx"><span style="color: blue;">FRCP</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Further, the list of new regulations is growing. The passage
of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/healthreform/"><span style="color: blue;">PPACA</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">)
will result in the US Government <b><i>adding 159 new agencies, programs, and
bureaucracies</i></b> to assist with the compliance of <b><i>over 12,000 pages
of new regulations</i></b>. Over the past ten years, in response to the threat
of international terrorism, the US Department of Homeland Security (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm"><span style="color: blue;">DHS</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">) has added
hundreds of new regulations. Finally, cyber terrorism, including acts of
deliberate, large-scale disruption of enterprise computer networks, is now a
reality that all businesses must face.<br />
<br />
In the face of this, Big Data file storage and management vendors, along with
the associated industry consultants, have developed a list of hardware and
software requirements and associated value propositions to help enterprise
buyers decide which Big Data file storage and management platforms to purchase.
<br />
<br />
But before they buy, there are five steps that buyers should take first to
ensure they are prepared to meet the governance, risk and compliance
obligations brought on by today's Big Data file stores:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Internal Collaboration: </span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">File management and Governance, Risk and Compliance
(GRC) requirements affect business stakeholders from the boardroom to IT
to the manufacturing floor and loading dock to the accounting office. The
development of cross functional workgroups and the promotion of internal
collaboration between functional experts is the key to successfully
identifying, understanding and addressing all of the requirements and
issues involved in Big Data file management across the entire enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Network Architecture Planning: </span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Over the past 25 years, enterprise architectures grew
with little or no planning resulting in wasteful redundancy and little or
no access to all the enterprise data as may be required to comply with
today’s GRC requirements. The advent of the Internet and now cloud
computing has brought this decades of poorly planned networks to light
resulting in them become more of an enterprise liability than an asset.
The time is now for IT to hit the restart button and explore new options
such as virtualization, hybrid cloud architectures and the use of cloud
service providers (CSPs) that enable them to better leverage, manage and
optimize their existing infrastructure..<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Security:</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">
The introduction and proliferation of portable storage devices, Wireless
Internet, mobile computing devices, enterprise Software-as-as-Service
(SaaS) applications, cloud storage, blogs and social media such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, data theft and cyber attacks are a real
issue for which many (and arguably most) companies do not have a good
answer. Now is the time for IT to take a serious look at their internal
file access policies and move as quickly as possible to address any
existing shortcomings.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Data Retention Policy Development and Implementation: </span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
(FRCP) all have very specific data retention guidelines for what types of
ESI data an enterprise has to keep and how long to keep it.
Enterprises must investigate and document these requirements, development
data retention policies and acquire the appropriate software to ensure
compliance.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Technology Vendors and Consulting Partners:</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Business stakeholders and IT management may be
overwhelmed with the task of addressing the issues of successfully meeting
the GRC obligations of big file storage and management. If this is the
case, reach out to the hardware and software vendor community and askhow
their solutions support these issues. If required, engage the services of
vendor independent consulting partners to act as trusted advisors to
assist in the successful navigation of the required cultural transitions
and the acquisition of the best technology platforms.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
accelerating increase in the amount of unstructured Electronically Stored
Information (ESI) is putting IT organizations on the defensive as they struggle
to figure out how to store and manage all of this new information. However,
overseeing the expansion of storage space and ensuring that appropriate backups
are completed has become a minor part of the overall task of big file storage
and management. <br />
<br />
Rather business stakeholders and IT staff need to act now to first bring their
infrastructure under control so they can get in front of the growing list of
GRC regulations to which they are subject. By following the five steps outlined
above, enterprises will be in a position so that when they purchase a product,
they will have a good grasp of what their true enterprise challenges are and
have a high probability of bringing in a product that addresses them.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-52855337954682914692012-07-11T10:14:00.000-06:002012-07-11T10:15:04.015-06:00BeyondRecognition Ranked as Top Disruptive eDiscovery Technology to Watch in 2012<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihrm7nDcLf0TCmSFE4pJrYO4SGrTFDczhsaIxjVYo3gHIQTFd82-jD8hbrYkvbX5bsYFo0I2Jnp-zFVkkJbpIm2w7_JChz-unL1pHMp1GYuRDAXy8dF_axkKrIcyFlTGkpSSdbSA76uNdo/s1600/BRGraphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihrm7nDcLf0TCmSFE4pJrYO4SGrTFDczhsaIxjVYo3gHIQTFd82-jD8hbrYkvbX5bsYFo0I2Jnp-zFVkkJbpIm2w7_JChz-unL1pHMp1GYuRDAXy8dF_axkKrIcyFlTGkpSSdbSA76uNdo/s320/BRGraphic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
As a followup to eDSG's list of the <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/07/top-five-ediscovery-technologies-to.html" target="_blank">Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012</a>, today's blog post is a more detailed overview of <a href="http://www.beyondrecognition.net/BeyondRecognition,_LLC/Overview.html" target="_blank">BeyondRecognition</a>, the image processing technology that I ranked as the number one eDiscovery technology to watch in 2012.<br />
<br />
This past week, I had the opportunity to spend some time with <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=108582530" target="_blank">John Martin</a>, founder of BeyondRecognition ("BR") and long-time document conversion and litigation technology expert. First of all, to put BR's new technology into perspective, not much has changed in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for over 30 years. And, although once you begin to understand what John has created, you will realize that it is much more than just OCR, OCR is a good place to start the comparison.<br />
<br />
OCR software electronically translates scanned images of handwritten,
typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. This software is used to
convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize record-keeping
systems in offices and to publish text onto websites. And, with the accelerating rush to Electronically Stored Information (ESI), it would be easy to think that there just isn't that much paper to convert. However, there are literally trillions of existing documents that will someday need to be converted with billions more yet to be created. The legal, healthcare, mortgage and government markets are currently the prime offenders for creating more paper. In fact, in the five years to 2012, revenue for the Optical Character-Recognition
Software industry is expected to increase at an annualized rate of
1.6% to $386.9 million.<br />
<br />
And, OCR software developers have not really upgraded OCR software for a very long time. State-of-the-art today is not much different that it was 5-10 years ago. That's why John and BR have the opportunity to disrupt the market with a completely new approach to the challenge of converting non-digital documents to searchable ESI.</div>
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<b>BeyondRecognition Technology</b><br />
<br />
BR’s core technology includes image-based (NOT
text-based) document clustering, individual glyph (i.e. character) clustering for
highly effective cascading text conversion, error correction, and document-type-specific
data extraction functionality with accuracy rivaling or exceeding human coding.
</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br />Traditional Old Character Recognition (“OCR”) analyzes each
glyph or character in a linear fashion, treating each new glyph as a new issue,
and optimizes images for conversion purposes at the page level. By contrast, BR
clusters similar glyphs prior to trying to convert them to textual characters,
optimizing the portion of the images around each glyph, and then converts the
glyphs to characters using the most complete glyph from each glyph cluster. BR
then provides cascading or persistent error correction in which characters with
low confidence conversion scores are edited in words that failed spell checking.
Correcting a single word not only corrects all the instances of that sequence
of glyphs but corrects other words where the same glyph was used so long as the
correction results in a word that is in the word spelling dictionary. </span><i style="background-color: white;"><b>This cascading effect permits editors
to correct hundreds of thousands of words with a single keystroke or mouse
click</b></i><span style="background-color: white;"> – and the error correction is persistent because future occurrences
of that glyph will also be converted correctly.</span></div>
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<br />
<b>Example of Cascading Corrections</b><br />
<br />
In one example from a mortgage loan file project, correcting
the word “thc” with one keystroke resulted in correcting 142,121 instances of
the word “the” but also had the cascading effect of correcting yet others,
resulting in correcting a total of 149,520 instances of incorrectly spelled words.<br />
<br />
Here just a few of the words impacted by the cascading effect in that example:</div>
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<br />
“cducation” corrected to “education” (1209)</div>
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“Codc” to “Code” (744)</div>
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“qucstion” to “question” (702)</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Example of Reconstituting Unreadable Text</b><br />
<br />
Following is an example of how BR is able to optimize individual glyphs and essentially
reconstitute a page image of old court opinions using the “best” glyph from individual glyph clusters
to produce the most accurate text conversion.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIGWR2hLBarDPlC10rPW7iSi-ItDEkrumbaliym79JXfmk5aN6nzyMONDYaRR2GHu6lpydoenAL0ExQIT6fmsl3OPR0siJz8TeB5yYHL1xB1QOrDOUS4W9ziO3vuap2jS5tpNu7xk1WnfU/s1600/BRChart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIGWR2hLBarDPlC10rPW7iSi-ItDEkrumbaliym79JXfmk5aN6nzyMONDYaRR2GHu6lpydoenAL0ExQIT6fmsl3OPR0siJz8TeB5yYHL1xB1QOrDOUS4W9ziO3vuap2jS5tpNu7xk1WnfU/s400/BRChart.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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BR’s success in converting previously “unreadable” images on
things like decades-old court opinions and computer-output microfiche (“COM”)
makes it tempting to pigeon hole BR as just an advanced text recognition
company, but the functionality doesn’t stop there.<br />
<br />
<b>Potential to Compete with Off-shore Coding</b><br />
<br />
By clustering like documents
based on image similarity and then enabling users to rapidly build data extraction rules for each type or class of record,
including location-based rules or rules based on non-textual elements, BR can
create data extraction fields <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8262911310217101208" name="_GoBack"></a>or metadata elements for
each of those document types. The resulting index of specific types of data
elements rivals or exceeds human coding. <i><b>And, that may be the real disruptive feature of BR as it is going to provide a much more accurate and financially compelling alternative to off-shore coding.</b></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>Summary and Comments</b></span></div>
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<br />
Not much has changed in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for over 30 years. However, BeyondRecognition is about to change that with a new image processing technology that is going to be very disruptive to the legal market and many other market that have to convert and code documents. And that why <span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I ranked BeyondRecognition as the number one eDiscovery technology to watch in 2012.</span></div>
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</div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-35653177380113019802012-07-10T16:21:00.000-06:002012-07-10T18:18:35.157-06:00Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmKuobELi8heh8LwBI38GuWZRBPhwaIJmsKZTHypp38NF6UEnK_kLXEMLFuEx9cyleUKFrD8Py43ZLsuji1Nh4r6-GUyAaQmuJ5ixXFyr60Owb5tAKWOP-VPftwihcstbpJ4tOn-X5-Iof/s1600/Top5technologies2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmKuobELi8heh8LwBI38GuWZRBPhwaIJmsKZTHypp38NF6UEnK_kLXEMLFuEx9cyleUKFrD8Py43ZLsuji1Nh4r6-GUyAaQmuJ5ixXFyr60Owb5tAKWOP-VPftwihcstbpJ4tOn-X5-Iof/s320/Top5technologies2012.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Over the past 12 months I have had the unique opportunity to seek out and <b>review over 100 eDiscovery technologies</b>. As a result, I have had the pleasure of being exposed to some exciting new technologies that will have a disruptive impact on the eDiscovery market in the second half of 2012.<br />
<br />
With over 100 technologies to choose from, culling the list down was not an easy task. Therefore, I had to rely upon some amount objective criteria such as platform technology stack and supported environments along with a heavy dose of my subjective opinion in regards to how disruptive a technology could be within the paradigm shift of the eDiscovery market.<br />
<br />
The objective, more technical criteria was easy. At least in regards to 4 of my 5 choices. The subjective criteria was a bit more complicated as I took into consideration criteria such as pricing, positioning, deployment flexibility, management team and uniqueness.<br />
<br />
Following are my choices for the <b>Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012</b>:<br />
<b style="background-color: white;"><br /></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white;">BeyondRecognition, BeyondRecognition</b><br />
<br />
Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a foundational technology for litigation services and eDiscovery hasn't changed much in 30 years. And, vendors really haven't worked on making it more accurate or added any significant new bells and whistles. Therefore, after I had the opportunity to spend some time with John Martin from <a href="http://www.beyondrecognition.net/BeyondRecognition,_LLC/Overview.html" target="_blank">BeyondRecognition</a> and review his new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyph" target="_blank">glyph</a> based image processing technology designed to replace OCR and more, it was an easy decision to rank Beyond Recognition as the technology that will have the most disruptive <span style="background-color: white;">impact on the eDiscovery market in the second half of 2012.<br /><br />With c</span><span style="background-color: white;">haracter and word identification and conversion accuracy at 99.5%+, s</span><span style="background-color: white;">ingle instance character and word correction, </span><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="background-color: white;">Logical Document Determination (LDD), d</span><span style="background-color: white;">ocument type classification, d</span><span style="background-color: white;">uplication document detection, d</span><span style="background-color: white;">atabase field indexing and a cloud based scalable architecture that can process terabytes of data per day, BeyondRecognition will most definitely have a disruptive impact on the eDiscovery market and any other markets that require large volumes of text based materials to be processed and coded. For more information about BeyondRecognition, please visit: </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.beyondrecognition.net/BeyondRecognition,_LLC/Overview.html">http://www.beyondrecognition.net/BeyondRecognition,_LLC/Overview.html</a>.</span><br />
<b style="background-color: white;"><br /></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white;">X1 Social Discovery, X1 Discovery</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b><br /></b>With the rapid proliferation of social media, I predict there are going to be very few eDiscovery and Information Governance projects going forward that don't include potential evidence from social media sources such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Therefore, I included </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/social_discovery.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">X1 Social Discovery</a><span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">from </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">X1 Discovery</a><span style="background-color: white;"> as one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012.</span><br />
<br />
X1 Social Discovery™ is the industry's first investigative solution specifically designed to enable eDiscovery and computer forensics professionals to effectively address social media content and web content, in one single interface. X1 Social Discovery<span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;"> provides for a powerful platform to collect, authenticate, search, review and produce electronically stored information (ESI) from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other web sources. </span><span style="background-color: white;">For more information about X1 Social Discovery</span><span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">, please visit: </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://x1discovery.com/social_discovery.html">http://x1discovery.com/social_discovery.html</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b>X1 Rapid Discovery, X1 Discovery</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b><br /></b>With the accelerating volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in the cloud, I predict there are going to be more and more eDiscovery and Information Governance projects going forward that require potential evidence to be extracted from the cloud and possibly even processed in the cloud. Therefore, I included </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/rapid_discovery.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">X1 Rapid Discovery</a><span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">from </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">X1 Discovery</a><span style="background-color: white;"> as one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012.</span><br />
<br />
With X1 Rapid Discovery<span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;">, organizations can quickly access, search, triage and collect their data in their existing cloud environments, without having to first export that data; thereby transforming how organizations address the challenges of search, collection and analysis of cloud-based data. While other eDiscovery products require migrating or even shipping data to the vendor tools, X1 Rapid Discovery</span><span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;"> is a hardware-independent software solution that uniquely installs and operates on demand where your data currently resides. For more information about X1 Rapid Discovery</span><span style="background-color: white;">™</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">, please visit: </span><a href="http://x1discovery.com/rapid_discovery.html" style="background-color: white;">http://x1discovery.com/rapid_discovery.html</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><br />
<b style="background-color: white;"><br /></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white;">TunnelVision, </b><b style="background-color: white;">Mindseye Solutions</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />The Early Case Assessment (ECA) tool landscape has changed dramatically over the past 12 months. New tools that cover a larger percentage of the </span><a href="http://www.edrm.net/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">EDRM</a><span style="background-color: white;"> model and are built upon newer more flexible technologies have emerged with aggressive new pricing models. Therefore, I included </span><a href="http://www.mindseyesolutions.com/product-tour/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">TunnelVision</a><span style="background-color: white;"> from </span><a href="http://www.mindseyesolutions.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Mindseye Solutions</a><span style="background-color: white;">, a </span><span style="background-color: white;">representative of those new ECA platforms, </span><span style="background-color: white;">as </span><span style="background-color: white;">one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />TunnelVision was purpose-built by long time eDiscovery industry experts to address the challenges that organizations are facing when supporting eDiscovery and Information Governance. The technology is a simple yet flexible platform, designed to scale, and delivers full transparency. TunnelVision carries a predictable cost model and helps in managing risk, identifying exposure, and eliminating wasted time throughout the process. For more information about TunnelVision from Mindseye, please visit: </span><a href="http://www.mindseyesolutions.com/" style="background-color: white;">http://www.mindseyesolutions.com/</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><br />
<b style="background-color: white;"><br /></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white;">Equivio Zoom, Equivio</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b><br /></b>Predictive coding or Technology Assisted Review (TAR) has captured the imagination of the industry in the first half of 2012. As such, I wanted to include predictive coding technology in my list of </span><span style="background-color: white;">top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012 and therefore I chose <a href="http://www.equivio.com/products.php" target="_blank">Equivio Zoom</a> from <a href="http://www.equivio.com/" target="_blank">Equivio</a>.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />Equivio develops text analysis software for eDiscovery. Users include the DoJ, the FTC, KPMG, Deloitte, plus hundreds of law firms and corporations. Equivio offers Zoom, an integrated web platform for analytics and predictive coding. Zoom organizes collections of documents in meaningful ways. So you can zoom right in and find out what’s interesting, notable and unique. For more information about Equivio Zoom from Equivio, please visit: <a href="http://www.equivio.com/">http://www.equivio.com/</a>.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><b>Summary and Comments</b></span><br />
<br />
With over 100 technologies to choose from, culling the list down was not an easy task. Therefore, I had to rely upon some amount objective criteria such as platform technology stack and supported environments along with a heavy dose of my subjective opinion in regards to how disruptive a technology could be within the paradigm shift of the eDiscovery market. BeyondRecognition, X1 Social Discovery, X1 Rapid Discovery, TunnelVision and Equivio Zoom definitely met these criteria.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">It will be interesting to review my list of To</span><span style="background-color: white;">p Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012 this time next year when I choose another list. Some on the 2012 list will have had a big impact and some will not. However, one thing is for sure, each of these technologies represents a major step forward for litigation and eDiscovery technology.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><b style="background-color: white;"><br /></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white;">Additional Product Reviews</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />Over the coming weeks, I will be posting additional product reviews for each of the technologies listed in the eDSG To</span><span style="background-color: white;">p Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-16541765512462035242012-06-26T09:21:00.000-06:002012-06-26T09:36:15.151-06:00The Best Place to Perform Technology Assisted Review (TAR)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LJ3j13vpzJ2Wiu0ndf-2vBL_IwJP_bQYtYjfreI6C5uzfcnd8Q1iZBF2EMX8FvQJsv5UOZw9F4wCMF24R5rYGusdTwRLeGdeAxT5O10caWebIWFkVLci4GGuMTpZuVxyn45Ojbq4SKqq/s1600/BestPlaceforTAR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LJ3j13vpzJ2Wiu0ndf-2vBL_IwJP_bQYtYjfreI6C5uzfcnd8Q1iZBF2EMX8FvQJsv5UOZw9F4wCMF24R5rYGusdTwRLeGdeAxT5O10caWebIWFkVLci4GGuMTpZuVxyn45Ojbq4SKqq/s320/BestPlaceforTAR.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The resulsts of eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) Weekly Survey on "Where is your Technology Assisted Review (TAR) done?" are in and they reveal that </span><b style="font-family: inherit;"><i>43%</i></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of the respondents are</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">outsourcing their </span><b style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">Technology Assisted Review (TAR) </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">to third party document review </span>providers<span style="font-family: inherit;">. These results seem to be somewhat contradictory to the prime objective and overall value proposition of the Legal Services Outsourcing (LSO) or Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) vendors to provide less expensive manpower for labor intensive tasks such as document review.</span><br />
<br />However, according to a report on the <a href="http://fronterion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Fronterion-Ten-For-2012-Top-Ten-Trends-for-Legal-Outsourcing-in-2012.pdf" target="_blank">Top Ten Trends in Legal Outsourcing for 2012 by Fronterion LLC</a>, legal technology platforms (such as TAR) will be increasingly bundled together with traditional LPO offerings, combing two of the most important trends shaping the legal profession today. This means using software systems as well as low cost human labor to provide cheaper and more efficient legal services.<br />
<br />
This trend seems to actually have been evolving for years as legacy LPO players have long been utilizing software tools and techniques during the document review processes including: document clustering, email thread management and keyword and concept search to cull and organize the documents in order to increase the speed and reduce the overall cost of review. Adding predictive coding to mix as a way to reduce the cost even further seems like a logical progression in the evolution of the LPO as they strive to maintain their margins.<br />
<br />
The percentage of the respondents that chose something other than an LSO for w<span style="background-color: white;">here they send their Technology Assisted Review (TAR) </span><span style="background-color: white;">also provided some interesting results:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Outside Counsel (14%)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Internal as part of Document Review Software (14%)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Internal as separate Technology Assisted Review (TAR) Software (29%)</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The fact that <strong><em>14%</em></strong> of the respondants chose <strong><em>Outside Counsel </em></strong>for w<span style="background-color: white;">here they send their Technology Assisted Review (TAR) </span><span style="background-color: white;">indicates that although the eDiscovery market is going through a paradigm shift with corporate legal departments bringing eDiscovery services in-house, there are still some legal departments relying on their outside counsel for eDiscovery services. An interesting question for a future eDSG poll would be whether or not legal departments send their TAR to outside counsel because their outside counsel is proficient at TAR or because they send all of their eDiscovery work to outside counsel. It would also be telling to investigate whether or not these outside counsel are performing the TAR services internally or sub-contracting them to an LPO or LSO.<br /><br />The results of the <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/2012GeneralCounselSurveyoneDiscovery.html" target="_blank">eDSG 2012 Survey of the General Counsel from the Global 250</a> indicated that 86% of the respondants send their document review to either outside counsel or an LPO. However, the survey also revealed that 75% of the respondants were frustrated that neither outside counsel nor legacy LPOs were providing adequate support for eDiscovery. This survey also revealed that 80% of general counsel from the global 250 were frustrated with having to deal with software vendors. This statistic leads into the last two facts from the eDSG weekly poll on where respondents are sending TAR. The poll reveals that <strong><em>43% are performing TAR internally</em></strong> which indicates that they are having to "deal" with software vendors. The eDSG weekly poll is open to anyone that wants to vote and therefore the respondants are not necessarily general counsel from the global 250. In fact, I would venture to say that very few is any of the respondants to this week's poll were general counsel. However, it is still significant and shows a trend that 43% of the respondants indicated that they are performing TAR internally.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">The fact that <strong><em>14%</em></strong> of the respondents chose <span style="background-color: white;"><b><i>I</i></b></span><b style="background-color: white;"><i>nternal as part of Document Review Software</i></b><span style="background-color: white;"> for w<span style="background-color: white;">here they send their Technology Assisted Review (TAR) indicates that some of the document review vendors have successfully integrated TAR into their review platforms.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">However, the fact that <strong><em>29%</em></strong> of the respondants chose <strong><em>Internal as separate Technology Assisted Review (TAR) Software</em></strong> for w<span style="background-color: white;">here they send their Technology Assisted Review (TAR) indicates that eDiscovery users are not yet comfortable with TAR and may not be ready to use it as part of their stand document review process. However, this statistic is significant enough to indicate that eDiscovery users understand the value of TAR and are therefore using in those situations where it satisfies the technical and legal requirements.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">The resulsts of eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) Weekly Survey on "Where is your Technology Assisted Review (TAR) done?" reveals that users within the eDiscovery market is still trying to figure out when, where an how to best utilize Technology Assisted Review (TAR). Complicated by the ongoing paradigm shift of responsibility for eDiscovery services moving to the legal deparments and exaserbated by the evolution of both LPOs and outside counsel trying to refine their business models, TAR users should take the time to understand their internal requirements and then investigate the best approach, partners and place to perform TAR. It may not be as straight forward to they think.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-8.html" target="_blank">Click Here</a> to view the results of the </span></span>eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) Weekly Survey on "Where is your Technology Assisted Review (TAR) done?".<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span><br />
<br />Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-36256086466167877372012-06-20T17:56:00.000-06:002012-06-21T09:29:09.486-06:00Percieved Value of Technology Assisted Review (TAR)<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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<a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/" target="_blank">eDiscovery Solutions Group</a> (eDSG) ran a public poll the week of June 11, 2012 asking respondents to vote on "The Number One Reason for Using Technology Assisted Review (TAR)". The poll was open for 7 days and there were 476 responses.<br />
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eDSG marketed this poll to the eDiscovery and legal community through specific and targeted LinkedIn groups such as <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4270716" target="_blank">The Computer Assisted eDiscovery Group</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1895044" target="_blank">The eDiscovery Solutions Group</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1827179" target="_blank">The Early Case Assessment Association</a> and via Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ediscoverygroup" target="_blank">@eDiscoveryGroup</a>. <br />
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Respondents did not have to identify their position within the eDiscovery market and were able to vote more than once.<br />
The results of the poll are as follows:<br />
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Check the Accuracy of Human Review = 14%</div>
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Reduce the Document Set for Human Review = 29%</div>
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Replace Human Reviewers = 57%<br />
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To see a graphic representation of this poll and of all eDSG polls, please go to the eDSG website: <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-8.html">http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-8.html</a>.</div>
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<strong>Comment and Analysis on Results</strong></div>
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Most of the recent interest with Technology Assisted Review (TAR) or Predictive Coding, as it is sometimes called, stems from <em><a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/Documents/JudePeckDecisiononDaSilvaMoore.pdf" target="_blank">Da Silva Moore</a></em> (2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23350 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2012)), a decision rendered by Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck and confirmed by U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter (11 Civ. 1279 (ALC)(AJP)). However, TAR is not new and its value and reliability has been studied for years.<br />
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As an example, in a 2009 study published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology by Roitblat, Kershaw and Oot, titled, "<a href="http://www.akershaw.com/Documents/Document%20Categorization%20St...pdf" target="_blank">Document Categorization in Legal Electronic Discovery: Computer Classification vs. Manual Review</a>", two TAR systems each agreed with an original human review on about 83% of the documents reviewed. By comparison, two new human teams only agreed on about 73% of the documents. As a result, the Roitblat, Kershaw and Oot study concluded that TAR was, "no worse than using human review."<br />
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Other studies have also addressed the “myth” that human document review is somehow inherently more reliable than could be obtained with TAR (e.g., <a href="http://jolt.richmond.edu/v17i3/article11.pdf" target="_blank">Grossman & Cormack, 2011; Baron, et al., 2009</a>). As such, the evidence has been clear for some time that TAR can be very effective.<br />
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However, in an industry known for evolving and embracing new technology at the pace of a snail, with a built in prejudice and comfort level for human review, I am not convinced that the market has agreed upon the best practice for using TAR. As an example, I have witnessed users utilizing TAR to cull down very large data sets with statistical "hit rate" settings in the high 90%, leaving the "important" review work to humans. I have also seen users utilizing TAR to "spot check" the accuracy of human reviewers with the necessary "rework" going back to a different set of human reviewers. During this early adaptor phase in the evolution of TAR, neither of the uses that I sited for TAR are necessarily wrong. I just believe that the research and evidence already justifies the more productive and financially rewarding use of TAR is to replace human reviewers.<br /><br />Given all of this, I was actually very pleased to see that 57% of the voters in this eDSG poll agreed that the number one reason for using Technology Assisted Review (TAR) was to replace human reviewers. However, more in line with what I would have thought, 43% of the respondants voted otherwise. I would suspect that these are the mainstream buyers and the laggards (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm" target="_blank">see Crossing the Chasm</a>). Or maybe these were the voters that own and operate offshore document review organizations?<br /><br />In any case, maybe TAR is going to be the "tipping point" technology that finally drives the legal industry to explore and possibly embrace to the value of technology? Let's hope so.<br />
</div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-66534194198859669622012-06-07T14:44:00.002-06:002012-06-11T11:35:58.606-06:002012 Study of Global 250 General Counsel on eDiscovery<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In its ongoing mission to evaluate and report on the current status and thoughts of the stakeholders from the eDiscovery, Information Governance and Cloud Computing market, eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG), conducted a blind survey of the General Counsel from the Global 250 on various aspects of eDiscovery.<br /><br />We sent out the survey on February 6, 2012 and closed submission on May 31, 2012. During that time, we received 127 responses for a 51% participation rate. Please note that we believe that many of the surveys were filled out and submitted by Associate General Counsel and possibly other staff members.<br />
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For a more detailed view of the results, please go to: <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/2012GeneralCounselSurveyoneDiscovery.html">http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/2012GeneralCounselSurveyoneDiscovery.html</a></div>
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Following is an overview of the results of this survey:</div>
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<strong>Lawsuits per Year</strong></div>
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In order to gauge the potential requirement to engage in eDiscovery, eDSG asked how many lawsuits the enterprise was a party to in the last 12 months that required eDiscovery processing such as collections, ECA and Document Review.<br />
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Less than 10 = 28%<br />
11 to 25 = 59% <br />
More than 25 = 13%</div>
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<strong><br />eDiscovery Collections</strong></div>
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eDSG asked if eDiscovery collections were done internally, by a third party forensics group or by outside counsel.</div>
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Outside Counsel = 51%<br />
Third Party Forensics Group = 35%<br />
Internal = 13%</div>
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I wasn't surprised that 86% of the respondents indicated that they outsourced collections to either a third party forensics group or outside counsel. However, over the next 24 months as eDiscovery moves away from service providers and outside counsel to the enterprise, I predict that internal collection will increase significantly.</div>
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<strong>Early Case Assessment (ECA)</strong></div>
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eDSG asked if Early Case Assessment (ECA) was done internally, by a third party Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) group or by outside counsel.</div>
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Outside Counsel = 51%<br />
LPO = 29%<br />
Internal = 20%</div>
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I was surprised that 51% of the respondents indicated the Early Case Assessment (ECA) was done by outside counsel. It is possible that there was some confusion with the term LPO, even though I provided an explanation that LPO included litigation service providers. Over the next 24 months as eDiscovery moves away from LPOs and outside counsel to the enterprise, I predict that internal ECA will increase significantly.</div>
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<strong>Document Review</strong></div>
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eDSG asked if Document Review was done internally, by a third party Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) group or by outside counsel.</div>
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Outside Counsel = 43%<br />
LPO = 43%<br />
Internal = 13%<br />
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<strong>Top Concerns Over the Next 12 Months</strong></div>
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eDSG asked the respondents to indicate the top concerns were over the next 12 months. Please note that respondents were able to check more than one top concern.</div>
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Overwhelmed with ESI = 51%<br />
Managing the Cost of eDiscovery = 100%<br />
Understanding the Impact of Social Media = 75%<br />
Understanding and Leveraging New Technology = 59%<br />
Education and Training of Staff = 79%<br />
Outside Counsel Not Providing Adequate Support for eDiscovery Requirements = 63%<br />
Collaboration between internal stakeholders = 91%<br />
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This question revealed the most significant results. 100% of the respondents indicated that they were concerned about managing the cost of eDiscovery. 91% indicated that they were concerned about collaboration between internal stakeholders. 79% were concerned about education and training of staff and 75% were concerned about understanding the impact of social media. 51% were overwhelmed with ESI.</div>
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<strong>Top Frustrations Over the Past 12 Months</strong></div>
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eDSG asked the respondents to indicate the top frustrations over the past 12 months. Please note that respondents were able to check more than one frustration.<br />
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Cost of eDiscovery not declining as rapidly as expected = 95%<br />
Outside Counsel Not Providing Adequate Support for eDiscovery Requirements = 75%<br />
Dealing with eDiscovery Software Vendors = 80%<br />
Rapidly Changing Technology = 81%<br />
Increase in the Amount of ESI = 90%<br />
Legacy LPOs Not Providing Adequate Support for eDiscovery Requirements = 75%<br />
Lack of Understanding of Internal eDiscovery Requirements = 65%</div>
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<strong>Top Pet Peeves Over the Past 12 Months</strong><br />
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eDSG asked the respondents to indicate the top pet peeves over the past 12 months. Please note that respondents were able to check more than one pet peeve.</div>
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Annoying eDiscovery Vendor sales people = 65%<br />
Outside Counsel's refusal to take responsibility on eDiscovery = 50%<br />
Lack of Support from Information Technology (IT) group = 50%<br />
Anyone that states that litigation in now all about technology = 75%<br />
Outside Counsel and LPOs Knowingly Low Balling Cost Estimates = 85%<br />
LPOs dropping the ball on eDiscovery Projects = 75%<br />
eDiscovery Cost Overruns = 75%<br />
Small Suits that Cost More to Process than Settle = 50%<br />
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Top pet peeves is my favorite category as it provides some very interesting insight into what is really going on within these organizations. And, it provides great feedback for LPOs and outside counsel.</div>
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85% of the respondents indicated that a top pet peeve was outside counsel and LPOs knowingly "low balling" cost estimates. 75% indicated LPOs dropping the ball on eDiscovery projects, eDiscovery cost overruns and anyone that states litigation is now all about technology. 65% indicated annoying eDiscovery vendor sales people.</div>
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Next week I will post the results of Global 250 General Counsel plans for eDiscovery over the next 12 months.<br />
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For a more detailed view of the results, please go to: <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/2012GeneralCounselSurveyoneDiscovery.html">http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/2012GeneralCounselSurveyoneDiscovery.html</a></div>
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<br /></div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-89831662483279045872012-05-10T09:07:00.000-06:002012-05-10T09:08:13.126-06:00Do Litigators Need to Understand Predictive Coding Theory?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With the debate over Predictive Coding entering a feverish pitch, there is an interesting thread of discussion beginning to emerge asking whether or not litigators and other users need to understand what I am going to refer to as Predictive Coding Theory.<br />
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In a May 4, 2012 Blog titled, "<a href="http://valoratech.blogspot.com/2012/05/3-things-missing-in-predictive-coding.html">3 Drawbacks To Predictive Coding</a>", Sandra E. Serkes, President and CEO of <a href="http://valoratech.com/index.html" target="_blank">Valora Technologies</a> writes "What is missing (in regards to the Predictive Coding debate), is a discussion of the specific weaknesses of the overall Predictive Coding technique. She then goes on to indicate that, "Predictive Coding tagging algorithms are not transparent".<br />
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To put this into more technical terms, do we need to know what probability theories and related dimension reduction systems are being used as the foundational algorithms for Predictive Coding system to identify relevant<em> </em>documents?<br />
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For those of you who are interested in a more detailed overview of Predictive Coding, I suggest that you read a March 25, 2012 Blog post titled, "<a href="http://e-discoveryteam.com/2012/03/25/predictive-coding-based-legal-methods-for-search-and-review/" target="_blank">Predictive Coding Based Legal Methods for Search and Review</a>", Ralph Losey does an excellent job of discussing the basic technical mechanics and some of the underlying theories of Predictive Coding.<br />
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Getting back to my question about how much we need to know about Predictive Coding, I am in the process of developing some unique insight. Over the past 30 days, in preparation for adding a Predictive Coding module to the DCIG/eDSG 2012 Early Case Assessment Buyers Guide, I have been interviewing product managers from some of the Predictive Coding vendors and current users of Predictive Coding system to develop a list of criteria for reviewing and ranking the platforms for our buyers guide. One of the questions that I have been asking is what probability theories and related dimension reduction systems are being used as the foundational algorithms for your Predictive Coding platform to identify relevant<em> </em>documents.<br />
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So far, I haven't gotten a straight answer as most of the product managers either don't undesrtand the question or want to move the discussion up a couple of layers in technology stack to talk about indexing, semantic search, clustering, relevance ranking, sampling and presentation of results. There is no doubt that these are all very pertinent topics to a perspective buyer of Predictive Coding technology. However, it doesn't answer the question about the transparency of exactly how these systems are identifying relevant documents.<br />
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Whether or not litigators need to understand Predictive Coding theory and the underlying probability theories and related dimension reduction systems is debatable. However, I believe that a minimum level of transparency from the Predictive Coding vendors would at least give buyers the opportunity to understand what they are buying and then compare the various offerings.<br />
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In 1969, <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd" title="Edgar F. Codd"><span style="color: #0645ad;">Edgar F. Codd</span></a> and some of his associates that I have actually had the honor or knowing, first formulated and proposed the theory of relational database. And, although I am not sure that it reach the level of skepticism and resistance to blind adoption that we are currently seeing with Predictive Coding. However, it was new and therefore many did require an explanation of the underlying theories and mathematics. Eventually, the discipline normalized and everyone just assumed that relational databases worked and there was no longer any need to question "how they worked'.<br />
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A similar vetting process would be very healthy for Predictive Coding. Check back to my blog in the coming weeks for updates and more information on this topic.<br />
<br />Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-69183782006543392472012-05-02T11:34:00.000-06:002012-05-02T20:33:01.236-06:00Time for the Next Generation of Cloud Leadership<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The cloud computing market is the now the "big thing" and there are hard revenue facts to back up that claim. As an example, in</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">dependent research firm Forrester Research expects the global cloud computing market to reach $241 billion in 2020 compared to $40.7 in 2010, according to a new Forrester report called “<a href="http://blogs.forrester.com/stefan_ried/11-04-21-sizing_the_cloud" target="_blank">Sizing the Cloud</a>”. This same Forrester Report indicates that although Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is going to capture a significant share of this revenue, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market will grow to to $92.8 billion by 2016.<br /><br />This rapid growth is a classic technology market paradigm shift. And, paradigm shifts, even in the fast paced world of Information Technology (IT) are often very hard for most people to grasp. It is not that they are necessarily resistant, lack intelligence or don't want to move forward. The truth is that we see through a lens that is familiar and the unfamiliar is hard to grasp, especially if it requires us to think differently. The challenge is that the familiar will often not take us into the future. The world changes, and as it does the familiar often becomes our enemy, not our friend.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Interestingly, when change around us is a rapid as the move to cloud computing, we often cling to the familiar because it provides us with stability when in reality the familiar is destined to keep us from meeting new opportunities in our changing world. Think <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2011/10/02/the-entrepreneurial-failure-of-eastman-kodak/" target="_blank">Kodak</a>. While they clung to the familiar the world changed and they were caught unable to catch up. The familiar was their nemesis.<br /><br />I see the same dynamics at play in the cloud computing market. And, although I am not predicting an epic cloud computing failure on the level of a Kodak, I do predict some surprising changes in in both the vendor community and among major enterprises as a result of lack of leadership in successfully navigating the cloud.</span>This begs the question about whether or not it might be time for the next generation of cloud technology leadership?<br /><br />In 2011, I just got a chance to read a really interesting article titled, "<a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/Documents/HS_AboveTheCloud.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Above the Cloud: The Next Generation of Cloud Leadership</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">", published on November 9, 2011 by Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz. The basic premise of the article is that t<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">o fully deliver on the promise of cloud computing, cloud service providers (CSPs), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and customers will all require some new and highly specific leadership abilities.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>Having just completed and published an in depth study of <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/results-of-2012-edsg-investigation-of.html" target="_blank">Information Governance and eDiscovery Practices for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)</a> that found several alarming flaws in cloud leadership with both vendors and the enterprise, </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I re-read the 2011 article by Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz with a more informed perspective.</span></span></span><br />
<strong><br />General Issues with Cloud Provider Leadership</strong><br />
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The current crop of cloud technology leaders on the vendor side of the equation have done an amazing job of monetizing the cloud during the early adopter phase of the technology adoption cycle. The early Cloud Service Provider (CSP) leaders from organizations such as <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon</a> and <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/" target="_blank">RackSpace</a> identified the demand for off site storage and dedicated hosting facilities and built the IT infrastructure to meet those demands. And, these early bets have paid off as industry analysts estimate AWS to be a billion-dollar business with a 10% profit. However, to continue to grow this business, CSP leadership is going to have to venture out beyond the outsourced data center and storage model into the IT solutions and managed services arena. And, although organizations such as AWS with its <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/" target="_blank">Marketplace offering</a> and are showing signs of understanding this quickly evolving paradigm shift, I am not convinced that the leadership completely understands the subtle nuances of moving into software solutions.<br />
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As an example, as I found from the hundreds of interviews that I did with many of the CSP executives, 98% did not understand even the most general requirements for information governance or eDiscovery and didn't believe that they (as a CSP) had any need to provide such services. At first I was perplexed by this response. But, after further reflection, it began to make sense. After all, why would an organization that had built a billion dollar business literally overnight need to consider changing their business model and expanding their offerings?<br />
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Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz answer this question in their article by stating that it is not only a matter of what markets to pursue and services to offer, but also a matter of business model innovation, which is a more rarefied strategic talent. Does this mean that the current CSPs are "one trick ponies"? This is probably the case for many that can't adopt to the new paradigm. However, as indicated, organizations such as AWS seem to be at least making an attempt to expand its offerings. However, I am going to contend that even AWS is going to have to bring in new leadership that understands this new software solutions paradigm to be successful.<br />
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This leads us to an examination of the hundreds if not thousands of Software-a-Service (SaaS) providers. Building upon the <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/CRM/financials" target="_blank">multi-billion dollar success of salesforce.com</a>, application developers funded by VC's looking for the next big ".com" throughout the world have jumped into the SaaS fray offering literally just about any type of software solution that you can imagine. However, many are having trouble "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm" target="_blank">Crossing the Chasm</a>" from early adoption and success to a full blown and financially viable business model. Possibly, that reason is that most of the early SaaS companies were and still are started and run by technologists. However, it probably takes a sales, marketing and customer services leader to take them to the next level. And, in the world of SaaS, these next generation leaders are hard to find.<br />
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Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz quoted the CEO of a SaaS provider who asks, "How do you monetize the customer long term?" Answering that question requires the ability to find the right combination of services, delivery, and internal resources in a rapidly evolving competitive landscape to produce a reasonable profit for the provider and real value to the customer. Bottom line, it take a next generation leader.<br />
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The last group that I am going to comment on in regards to cloud providers are the big legacy software providers such as <a href="http://www.oracle.com/" target="_blank">Oracle</a>, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/" target="_blank">Microsoft</a> and <a href="http://www.ibm.com/" target="_blank">IBM</a>. Historically, these giants have offered their legacy software to corporations under large and very expensive enterprise wide license schedules with 20%-40% annual maintenance and millions of dollars in associated custom programming and services to ensure that these systems work. Corporate buyers didn't really like this model but it was the only game in town. As the age old saying goes, "an enterprise IT buyer was never going to lose their job by choosing IBM whether the solution worked or not".<br />
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With the advent of SaaS over the past 5 years, the legacy providers now have competitive. As an example, why would an enterprise of any size not license salesforce.com on a per seat basis and not have to pay for any of the IT infrastructure costs? The answer is that you wouldn't. And therefore, the legacy providers have been forced to respond. However, it has not been as easy as you may think. Offering a SaaS solution requires planning and time. These organizations just can wake up one morning and decide that starting today they are going to offer SaaS solutions. They either have to build new applications from scratch or acquire an existing code base. Further, once they have the new SaaS offering in place, they then have to go to their installed base and begin the sales discussion that they now offer the option of SaaS. And, this process is wrought with danger as it signals to customers that SaaS is now an option. As a result, many decide that they should begin looking at alternative vendors. In short, many legacy providers have experienced client cannibalism at best (competition between the legacy software sales team and the new SaaS sales teasm) and loss of clients to competitors at worst while they attempt to make the transition to offering the option of SaaS.<br />
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None the less, these legacy vendors have few options. Therefore, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have all jumped into the cloud game with some pretty spectacular IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings. However, it has not been without at least a "pound of flesh" as I know many legacy software sales executives that were making a million plus per year and have been replaced with telemarketing sales people selling and supporting SaaS solutions. Once again, successfully making this transition to the cloud is going to take next generation leadership. <br />
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<strong>General Issues with Cloud User Leadership</strong><br />
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I am not going to rehash all of the operational and financial savings that can be realized by moving to the cloud. Instead, I am going to comment on the leadership aspects of what the enterprise needs to do to be successful leveraging the cloud.<br />
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Most Global 2000 organizations have very competent IT leaders that run massive international organizations with multi-million dollar budgets. However, how many of these leaders truly understand the value of the cloud and how many are willing to dismantle these massive organizations in the spirit of doing what's right for their share holders? And maybe an even more fundamental question is how many Global 2000 Board of Director members and C level executives understand the value of the cloud and are directing their IT executives to move forward with cloud migration plans? The answer to both of these questions is "not very many" and therein lies the gap in leadership.<br />
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Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz state that in organizations that employ the cloud, the focal point will inevitably be CIOs. They will have to understand how cloud computing can best support the business, both operationally and strategically. They will have to work collaboratively with other functions and parts of the business to realize the greatest possible value from the cloud and to uncover additional uses. And they will need to be trusted advisers to their CEOs, helping assess the trade-offs, risks, and advantages of various uses and deployments of the cloud for the company. More specifically, CIOs will need a comprehensive understanding of the issues in key business and operational areas.<br />
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I contend that the Global 2000 needs a new breed of CIO, one that is less technical and more business savvy with the ability and willingness to lead and not worry about maintaining previous IT empires. I contend that is it going to take next generation cloud leadership.<br />
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<strong>Conclusion</strong><br />
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The cloud is no longer something that is going to possibly happen and may just be a fade. The paradigm shift to the cloud is underway and therefore technology providers and technology users alike need to examine their current leadership and determine if a change may be required to at least provide the opportunity for success.<br />
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It is not that current leadership is not necessarily resistant, lack intelligence or don't want to move forward. The truth is that we see through a lens that is familiar and the unfamiliar is hard to grasp, especially if it requires us to think differently. The challenge is that the familiar will often not take us into the future. The world changes, and as it does the familiar often becomes our enemy, not our friend.<br />
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Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz conclude that as cloud computing develops over the next two to three years, leadership will be critical to the success of providers and buyers alike. Cloud customers whose CIOs understand and address those critical business and operational issues – security, integration of services, technical talent, legal/privacy/compliance, and vendor management –will get a head start on using the cloud more extensively and realizing its benefits: cost-savings, ability to access services on any device anywhere, reliability, scalability, and the agility those attributes confer on the business. For technology product and services companies, the impact of the new model of cloud delivery is even broader, affecting almost all functional areas of the organization from engineering and development and customer service through sales and marketing up through the key roles in the C-suite. Those providers that get it right will win the race to be market leaders while laggards will likely fall by the way side. In this new world, CEOs and Boards of provider companies and buyer companies will need to make sure that they are hiring executives with the right competencies – and they will have to move expeditiously as more companies compete for cloud talent that is already in very short supply.<br />
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Under any circumstances, being a part of this paradigm shift is nothing less than spectacular.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-12805017274665056182012-04-23T08:50:00.000-06:002012-04-23T09:01:01.760-06:00Virtual eDiscovery Arrives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Monday April 17, 2012, X1 Discovery out of Pasadena, California announced a major release of X1 Rapid Discovery, it’s Early Case Assessment (ECA) and Search platform. This latest version of X1 Rapid Discovery (X1RD) is actually a major rewrite of the architecture and user interface resulting in the first virtual Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform that users can remotely deploy to wherever Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is located. <br />
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I had to the chance to talk with Skip Lindsey, EVP Sales and Business Development at X1 Discovery about the genesis of X1RD. He indicated that they wanted to build on the success that they had seen providing advanced search and ECA to traditional enterprise clients with ESI behind a firewall by expanding support to the cloud. However, they didn’t want to be just another “me too” ECA cloud platform. Therefore, they decided to expand X1RD capabilities to run as a virtual application designed specifically to run in a private or public cloud environment in addition to its legacy support for traditional enterprise environments. He also indicated that they wanted X1RD to be highly scalable, easy for users to install and manage remotely, easy for users to move the virtual components to the data and conducive to a very disruptive pricing model. I think that they accomplished those goals and most certainly have earned a first mover status in the ECA platform market. <br />
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In today’s complex enterprise environment, X1RD should be a very attractive multi-purpose ECA alternative for users that currently have ESI scattered around behind their corporate firewall, in private clouds and maybe even held captive with one of the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). The major paradigm shift is that X1RD enables users to move the ECA process to the ESI whereas current ECA technology requires that ESI be collected and moved to the ECA platform either manually or over slow Internet pipes. <br />
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<strong>Current ECA Best Practices</strong><br />
Currently, an enterprise faced with responding to a legal matter has to identify where all potentially responsive ESI may be located, figuring out what they need to harvest and then collect and aggregate the ESI to a centralized physical location before they can even start the process of analysis and first pass review. This process can take weeks and months and cost thousands if not millions of dollars. Adding ESI stored with a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) has only exacerbate the situation by adding another layer of complexity, more time and more cost. For a more detailed overview of virtualization, please see “<a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/04/virtualization-is-key-to-future.html" target="_blank">Virtualization is the Key to Future eDiscovery Software</a>”. <br />
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<strong>X1RD Changes the ECA Paradigm</strong> <br />
X1RD completely changes the ECA paradigm. X1RD users have the ability to remotely load the X1RD virtual application into the computing environment of their choice as long as they have the appropriate credentials to do so. Once loaded, uses can then remotely configure, though a drag and drop user interface, as many X1RD virtual ECA processing engines as may be required to collect, index and process a given set of ESI. Please note that users will have the flexibility to configure X1RD on a single physical machine with multiple virtual machines or on multiple physical machines, each with multiple virtual machines. Because X1RD has done such a good job of masking the complexities of configuring and managing this virtual environment from users, its value may be lost on many users. However, this flexibility has tremendous operational and financial benefits.<br />
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As an example, because X1RD enables users to break up a large processing task into multiple smaller processing units that can run on very inexpensive machines, it doesn’t require users to purchase and/or provision high-end and expensive servers. X1RD enables users to either leverage the computing resources that they currently own foregoing the requirement to invest in large expensive servers that will sit idle for most of the time waiting for the next big ECA job. <br />
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X1RD installs in a matter of minutes and the user interface is attractive, easy to understand and provides everything that a litigation knowledge worker requires to search, analyze, review, tag and generate a load file in today’s eDiscovery environment. Further, for those clients that don’t want to run their own X1RD environment, X1RD lends itself to a managed services model that enables Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to run X1RD for clients from a remote location. <br />
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<strong>X1RD and the Amazon Cloud</strong> <br />
As recently reported on the New York Times Bits Blog, in a post titled, “<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8262911310217101208#overviewstats" target="_blank">Amazon Creates a Software Rental Store</a>”, Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, facing looming competition for its business of renting online data storage and computing, is introducing a store where customers will be able to rent business software from a number of third-party providers, including I.B.M., Microsoft and SAP. And now, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/isv/x1-discovery-inc" target="_blank">X1RD is the first virtual ECA platform</a> listed in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) ISV catalog. <br />
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Although there are other ECA and Document Review platforms running in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud such as <a href="http://www.nextpoint.com/" target="_blank">NextPoint</a>, there is a very distinct difference as AWS clients will be able to remotely load X1RD into their AWS computing environment and configure it to collect, search, analyze, complete first pass review and generate a load file without having to move any ESI. Its the paradigm shift that I eluded to earlier that enables users to move X1RD to the ESI as opposed to the legacy approach of moving ESI to the ECA platform. <br />
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Currently, X1RD will be able to provision and configure computing power, memory and storage from AWS as required for any ECA processing task large or small, provision X1RD from X1 Discovery and be processing ESI in a matter of hours. Once completed with the responsive ESI exported, users will be able to shut down this ECA environment and only pay for what they utilized. It’s a much different model and the industry has ever seen. <br />
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With the announcement of the AWS partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and SAP, it will be interesting to see what AW does with the X1RD opportunity from a marketing perspective. As indicated in “<a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/04/amazon-is-overlooking-fiancial-value-of.html" target="_blank">Amazon is Overlooking the Financial Value of eDiscovery</a>”, there is a latent demand for eDiscovery and Information Governance in the Cloud. And, in fact not providing such services may in fact be a barrier to entry for some enterprise clients. I am very encouraged by the announcement that AWS has added X1RD to its ISV catalog and optimistic that AWS may in fact understand that providing Information Governance, Search and eDiscovery may be one of the keys for Amazon to increase the $1.19 Billion in revenue that AWS posted for 2011 to a much higher level than could have ever been imagined with just IaaS or even standard PaaS services.<br />
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<strong>Disruptive Pricing</strong><br />
X1 is also pushing the pricing envelope by pricing X1RD at $1,000 per day or $5,000 per week for “all you can eat” or process. As an alternative, they also offer the option of a $25,000 perpetual license with 20% annual maintenance. This pricing model is very aggressive and is going to put downward pressure on the legacy model of pricing ECA processing on a per gigabyte basis.<br />
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<strong>Final Observations and Comments</strong><br />
As indicated in “<a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/ediscovery-will-follow-cloud-computing.html" target="_blank">eDiscovery will follow the Cloud Computing Boom</a>”, with the expanding volume of ESI in the cloud, the demand for Information Governance and eDiscovery is sure to follow. However, just moving your ECA or Document Review platform to the Cloud is not necessarily the answer as it still requires users to move large amounts of ESI to that platform. The most efficient model is to move the ECA application to the ESI. And, it appears that with the release of most recent version of X1RD that X1 Discovery has become a first mover in the race to capture this market.<br />
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In addition, in today’s complex enterprise environment, X1RD should also be a very attractive multi-purpose ECA alternative for users that currently have ESI scattered around behind their corporate firewall, in private clouds and maybe even held captive with one of the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).<br />
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As has been reported on several other blogs about this subject, with X1RD forging the way, other ECA vendors are sure to follow. However, that may be easier said then done, With years of experience designing, developing and maintaining complex enterprise class applications, I would suggest that many current legacy ECA vendors have code bases that would be literally impossible to move to the cloud as self-provisioning and remotely configurable virtual apps that can run on almost any class server. The only option would be a complete re-write which in many cases is a very dangerous path for a software vendor with a large installed based as it opens up that base to explore alternatives such as X1RD. As such, I am not convinced that many legacy ECA vendors will follow this trend. <br />
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One thing is for sure, the demand to process ESI that is in the cloud is going to continue to increase. And, it appears that users are going to have several options to address this demand; moving the ESI to the ECA platform or moving the ECA platform to the ESI. <br />
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Either way, the next few years are certainly going to be exciting times in the eDiscovery in the Cloud market.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-32772437976297911972012-04-19T08:48:00.000-06:002012-04-19T08:55:42.268-06:00The Top 5 Most Requested Features for Early Case Assessment Platforms<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">The week of April 9, 2012, eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) ran a poll that asked voters to rank the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform. Having spent the last 6 months analyzing ECA technology from the top ECA vendors in the world and talking to hundreds of end users in preparation for the release of the 2012 DCIG/eDSG Buyers Guide, the results of this survey were not overly surprising. However, the results are very telling in regards to the paradigm shift that has occurred in how users view Early Case Assessment. Therefore, I wanted to publish the details of the results of this poll.<br /><br /><strong>Summary of Results</strong><br />54% of the voters ranked Advanced Analytics as one of the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform. Support for Collection of Social Media and Collaboration came in second with 31%. Cost Calculations, Predictive Coding, Delivered as SaaS and Semantic Search came in third with 23%.<br /><br />Following is an analysis and commentary for each of the categories:<br /><br /><strong>Advanced Analytics</strong><br />I was not surprised that 54% of the voters ranked Advanced Analytics as one of the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform. After all, ECA is all about "analyzing" your potential pool of ESI to determine where it is located, what you have and how it will affect your case strategy. However, I thik that there is a subtle hint hidden within this top ranking that may signal a change in way users view the process of eDiscovery . As a followup, it would be interesting to ask users to define "Advanced Analytics" and then identify where within the </span><a href="http://www.edrm.net/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">EDRM</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">, they believe these analytics should be utilized. <br /><br />Historically, the standard eDiscovery workflow followed the EDRM and therefore ESI that was potentially responsive or relevant was identified via standard file type, custodian and data parameters, collected or ingested, culled. analyzed and reviewed. This analysis stage is what many within the industry now refer to as Early Case Assessment (ECA). However, in 2012, there are technologies that allow for identification and analysis of ESI before it is even ingested. Further, there is also now growing demand for the identification and analysis of live ESI residing in Content Management Systems (CMS), archiving systems, a wide variety of private and public email systems, public cloud storage and even public social media stores. As a result of these changing requirements, I contend that the fundamental definition of Early Case Assessment (ECA) is evolving and therefore it may be time to adjust best practices, workflows and our expectations of ECA platforms should support.<br /><br /><strong>Support for Collection of Social Media</strong><br />I was also not surprised that 31% of the voters ranked Support for Collection of Social Media as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. Corporate legal departments, corporate IT departments and outside counsel are beginning to realize the requirement to harvest potential evidence from social media sources such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and Google+ is real and therefore they want their ECA platform to be able to handle these file types.</span><b><br /><strong><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="color: #666666;">Collaboration</span></span></strong></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">31% of the voters ranked Collaboration as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. As the use of social media and SaaS based communication and collaboration applications has become more mainstream and therefore accessible to the enterprise knowledge worker, their expectations have risen accordingly. Therefore, it is not surprising that users expect their ECA platforms to follow the collaboration trend and support communications and collaboration for multiple different types of users from multiple different geographically regions. Security is obviously an issue that the ECA vendors will have to address as the information that ECA platforms is more sensitive and can lead to sanctions and financial penalties.<br /><br /><strong>Cost Calculations</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">23% of the voters ranked Cost Calculations as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. It has been well established that 70% of the cost of eDiscovery is in the cost of review and therefore there is a renewed emphasis on reducing the amount of ESI that eventually has to be reviewed. With this requirement in mind, users have been relying upon gathering the appropriate information such as amount of ESI by file type and custodian, etc. and plugging it into an Excel spreadsheet to forecast the eventual full cost of eDiscovery. As such, I completely understand that users now want this capability added to the ECA platform.<br /><br /><strong>Predictive Coding</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">I was very surprised that 23% of the voters ranked Predictive Coding as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. Predictive Coding currently normally resides as an alternative option to manual tagging and review within the Review section of the EDRM. So, I am not sure if these voters are confused or are truly contending (with their vote) that Predictive Coding technology needs to be pushed further to the left and utilized during the early stages of ESI identification, collection and analysis.<br /><br />I predict that Predictive Coding or some form of Machine Driven Analysis will be incorporated into the early stages of ESI identification, collection and analysis drvien by the demands to increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs. Pleaes note that eDSG in partnerhsip with DCIG will be releasing a Predictive Coding Buyers Guide this summer. And, without giving away any vendor secrets I can state that the market is going to intriqued with the extent to which Predictive Coding or Machine Driven Analysis is going to be available to support the entire eDiscovery lifecycle.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Delivered as SaaS</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">23% of the voters ranked SaaS Delivery as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. As I have said many times, I believe that the "train has left the station" on SaaS based eDiscovery platforms. The value proposition of operational efficiencies and costs savings are just too high for this train to turn around and therefore I was a bit surprised that Delivery as SaaS wasn't ranked higher. I suspect that maybe users are now expecting this feature to a standard option of any ECA platform and therefore failed to vote for it. Please note that I did not inlcude an option to vote for eDiscovery in the Cloud as that has become a very confusing and soon to be highly debated topic of disucssion.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Semantic Search</span></strong><b><br /></b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">23% of the voters ranked Semantic Search as one of the top most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. Semantic Search is the perfect companion of Advanced Analytics and is therefore another feature that many users believe needs to be pushed further to the left in the EDRM. The requirement of indexing makes it somewhat difficult to utilize during the identification and pre-collection phase. However, I have seen several real-time architectures that are in fact adressing this with real-time ongoing indexing as part of a larger and more comprehensive Information Governance platform. Therefore, as this infrastructure is more fully tested and the costs reduced, I would suspect that we will see Semantic Search utilized further to the left in the coming months and years.</span></div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><strong><span style="font-family: inherit;">First Pass Review</span></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">I was very surprised that only 15% of the voters ranked First Pass Review as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. As stated previously, it has been well established that 70% of the cost of eDiscovery is in the cost of review and therefore there is a renewed emphasis on reducing the amount of ESI that eventually has to be reviewed. Therefore the concept of a First Pass Review (FPR) or a mini review done during ECA has become a well accepted practice before a final review set is defined and exported to a full blown review platform.<br /><br />I predict that with the advancement of Predictive Coding techniques and other associated technologies that First Pass Review is going to expand and cannibalize a major percentage of the current Document Review platform market. And, at some point in time, what we now define as Document Review will vanish as ESI will go directly from storage or real-time location to analysis and review and then directly into some digital form ready for the courtroom. As evidence of this trend, it is interesting to note that we are now seeing many of the legacy ECA vendors expanding their FPR capabilities into full Document Review and many of the legacy Document Review vendors expanding their capabilities into ECA.<br /><br /><strong>Workflow Management</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wasn't overly surprised that only 15% of the voters ranked Workflow Management as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. I believe that workflow management is an extremely important feature of any operational application. However, I think that the definition of the workflow within the eDiscovery lifecycle is in such a state of flux that it may be premature to try and define a workflow management system that vendors can be confident will be pertinent for more than just a few release cycles. That being said, I believe that an ECA platform should provide solid workflow for First Pass Review and Predictive Coding and at least a user dashboard outlining the status of a "project" or "matter" as it makes its way from identification to collection to analysis to review to production. In my opinion, the real answer is a flexible workflow management system that enables users to define their eDiscovery lifecycle. Whether this is accomplished through an integrated OEM solution or as a proprietary solution will be up to the individual vendors to decide.</span></span><strong><br /><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />Legal Hold</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Only 8% of the voters ranked Legal Hold as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform because many beleive that it is outside the current definition of ECA and they still don't know if they want to utilize a best-in-class or a holistic approach to support the entire eDiscovery workflow.<br /><br />I predict that adding in real-time data mapping and coupling it with real-time legal hold that actually preserves ESI in a forensically sound manner is the direction that the market is going to take. Whether this is accomplished through an integrated OEM solution or as a proprietary solution will be up to the individual vendors to decide.<br /><br /><strong>Real-time Collections</strong><br />8% of the voters ranked Real-time Collection as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. Given where eDiscovery has come from in the past 5 years, Real-time anything is a very aggressive position to take. However, as the enterprise IT organizations become more involved in the eDiscovery process and eDiscovery becomes a subset of the Information Governance process, Real-time identification, analysis and collection will become an industry accepted best practice.<br /><br /><strong>Summary</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">This poll was very telling in regards to how users are changing their views and associated requirements for what an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform should support. ECA is definitely moving further to the left in the eDiscovery lifecycle and it appears that users want the eDiscovery platform vendors to support this paradigm shift.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-8.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Click Here</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"> to review the results of all of the polls that eDSG has been running on a weekly basis since June of 2011 on the current status of Information Governance and eDiscovery. </span><a href="http://bit.ly/m4VDjj" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Click Here</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"> to vote in the most recent eDSG Weekly Poll.</span>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-79376179323963825962012-04-11T15:47:00.001-06:002012-04-12T07:47:27.123-06:00Virtualization is the Key to Future eDiscovery Software<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_iGhW8He4GpIdaGhQgcpX5j57FglxzKdTKlpDZ-ccUXKKUj9Ijxr6sE61vBDfupBebucnyZlkEQqM4vVeyL6m2C4EI8OoJCj9Hm8EAD_fjDgpHVQaaspy49zpIOA9SSISyYeWLvaZ1en/s1600/VirtualeDiscovery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" qda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_iGhW8He4GpIdaGhQgcpX5j57FglxzKdTKlpDZ-ccUXKKUj9Ijxr6sE61vBDfupBebucnyZlkEQqM4vVeyL6m2C4EI8OoJCj9Hm8EAD_fjDgpHVQaaspy49zpIOA9SSISyYeWLvaZ1en/s400/VirtualeDiscovery.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Historically, eDiscovery software has run on a physical computer. However, this architecture has a significant number of operational and financial flaws that make it an unattractive option as the world of information management and therefore the eDiscovery industry moves forward and into the arena of Cloud Computing.<br />
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First of all, even though the cost of computing power (i.e. processors, memory, etc.) has dropped dramatically over the past several years and will continue to drop, with the option to run software in a virtual computing environment, it no longer makes any sense to "bind" software to single physical computer. The model is not flexible and doesn't leverage operational investments in data center infrastructure, rack space, power, cooling, cabling, maintenance and support.<br />
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Further, software running on a single physical computer is very inefficient as it rarely utilizes the power of that computer. And, when a physical computer is maximized, a new physical computer has to be provisioned (i.e. setup, configured, software loaded, tested, etc.) which takes time and therefore costs money.<br />
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Virtual computing environments, on the other hand, enable multiple virtual machines to run on the same physical machines thereby maximizing the utilization of the available computing power. Theoretically, users should be able to provision new virtual machines (within a physical machine) to meet specific computing demands without having to necessarily provision a new physical machine. Taking this virtual machine concept to a data center or in come cases a multi-data center concept, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon (AWS)</a> and <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/" target="_blank">Rackspace</a> utilize the latest technology to enable the seamless provisioning of additional virtual computing environments within a single physical machine and across as many physical machines as is necessary to complete a task. Further, most CSPs now enable users to also provision the appropriate amount of memory and storage as may be required for a specific task and for a specific amount of time. As an example, if Early Case Assessment (ECA) software ran in a virtual environment, users could provision a large number of both virtual and physical machines (with the appropriate memory and storage) to tackle the high processing requirements during ingestion, indexing and initial processing and then reduce the number of machines (virtual and physical) once the data was normalized and moved to a less computer intensive task such as document review.<br />
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The added benefit to the virtual eDiscovery software approach is that the vendor have the flexibility to only charge users for the computing power, memory and storage that they use as opposed to the current model that basically charges users to subsidize idle computing resources.<br />
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I would imagine that this all sounds very attractive to end users. And, I am sure that once these users completely understand the operational and financial value of virtual eDiscovery software, they won't be interested in an eDiscovery platform that doesn't run in a virtual environment. Adding more incentive for users to be interested in exploring virtual eDiscovery software solutions, eDiscovery software that is not virtual will not be very adept at running in the new cloud computing environment where virtual machines are the norm if not the requirement.<br />
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Unfortunately, there are only a few eDiscovery software platforms that have been designed to run in a virtual environment. And, although there are both hardware and software solutions available that will enable a legacy software solution (not designed for a virtual environment) to run in a virtual environment, they are somewhat clumsy and add additional expense and unnecessary layers of processing.<br />
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So, in the next several weeks, as a lead in to the release of the <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-3.html" target="_blank">eDSG/DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Interactive Buyer's Guide</a>, I will be publishing several articles on which eDiscovery software vendors have eDiscovery software that was designed to run in a virtual environment.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-75549901499861562532012-04-05T15:35:00.000-06:002012-04-06T17:54:27.194-06:00Amazon is Overlooking the Fiancial Value of eDiscovery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh84BRnh_roOluXKrYiyDgkB5uH0Q4OdqBd9v6n7Dr5ZomWaa3JMxOoYvxp5UqvFcaYJUeGiWdV1gB2DfW6v3oPaximxup0WLiGIj2WuqETe6pKV1CM7JvbBktTGyisrCqXAlfzhGCkQWK2/s1600/amazon_aws_logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh84BRnh_roOluXKrYiyDgkB5uH0Q4OdqBd9v6n7Dr5ZomWaa3JMxOoYvxp5UqvFcaYJUeGiWdV1gB2DfW6v3oPaximxup0WLiGIj2WuqETe6pKV1CM7JvbBktTGyisrCqXAlfzhGCkQWK2/s1600/amazon_aws_logo.jpg" /></a></div>
On April 4, 2012, <a href="http://gigaom.com/author/dharrisstructure/" target="_blank">Dick Harris</a> posted a really interested article on Gigacom.com titled "<a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/how-cloud-computing-could-boost-amazons-margins/" target="_blank">How the cloud could boost Amazon’s slow-moving margins</a>". Mr. Harris quoted an analyst from Morgan Stanley who indicated that Amazon’s cloud computing division could be a shining star (even if not too bright) on the company’s long road toward increased profit margins. However, while their forecast isn’t glowing, it also doesn’t account for the evolution of Amazon’s cloud business from pure infrastructure-as-a-service into higher-level (and higher-margin) services. He went on to state that in the new research report published Monday morning, analysts Scott Devitt, Andrew Ruud and Nishant Verma come to a possibly disconcerting conclusion for any investors banking on Amazon for short-term returns. The report’s gist: “After analyzing Amazon.com’s cost structure in detail and by segment, we conclude that there are far more variable costs than investors believe, leading to an overly optimistic timeline for margin expansion.” But Amazon Web Services is an opportunity Amazon might be able to exploit.<br />
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The report estimates that AWS was responsible for $1.19 billion in revenue in 2011 (I <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/dont-look-now-but-aws-might-be-a-billion-dollar-biz/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">predicted in October the business was on a billion-dollar run rate</span></a>), of which $108 million (or about 9 percent) was sheer profit. It’s able to maintain this margin while <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-cuts-prices-again-on-key-web-services/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">constantly dropping prices on its cloud services</span></a>, the report contends, because AWS uses a cost-plus pricing model. That is, it just adds a premium (about 10 percent) on top of the cost of delivering those services, which continue to drop as Amazon leverages its economies of scale to buy and operate more gear and bandwidth at lower prices.<br />
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I found all of this to be very encouraging for Amazon stockholders and the cloud computing industry. However, what really caught my eye was Mr. Harris's contention that AWS margins actually could start rising as the company expands its services beyond sheer infrastructure and into managed services. He indicated that <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-launches-home-grown-nosql-database/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">Its NoSQL DynamoDB database service</span></a>, for example, is a service for which Amazon adds value (and cost) beyond just the delivery of cloud-based infrastructure, and there are <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/will-amazon-offer-analytics-as-a-service/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">lingering rumors of a big data analytics service</span></a> that will provide higher-level services than AWS’s existing Elastic MapReduce offering. <br />
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For those of you who read my Blog, I have been contending for that past 6 months that Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as Amazaon are missing a very key competitive advantage by not offering eDiscovery and Information Governance as a part of an expanded Platform-as-a-Service. Please see <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/01/perfect-storm-ediscovery-and-cloud.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2288bb;">The Perfect Storm: eDiscovery and Cloud Service Providers</span></a>, <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/01/cloud-computing-architecture-and.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #888888;">Cloud Computing Architecture and eDiscovery</span></a>, <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/ediscovery-will-follow-cloud-computing.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #888888;">eDiscovery Will Follow the Cloud Computing Boom</span></a> and <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/11/navigating-ediscovery-in-cloud-shouldnt.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2288bb;">Navigating eDiscovery in the Cloud Shouldn't Be That Difficult</span></a>.<br />
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Based on my research that there is a latent demand for eDiscovery and Information Governance in the Cloud, I conducted a research study asking both CSPs and their clients what they thought about how CSPs were currently supporting eDiscovery and Information Governance in the Cloud. The results were very disappointing as most of the CSPs had not idea what eDiscovery was, the legal requirements nor the vlaue that it would bring to their client bases. You can read the results of this survey at: <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/results-of-2012-edsg-investigation-of.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #888888;">Results of the 2012 eDSG Investigation of Cloud Service Providers and eDiscovery</span></a>.<br />
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With all of this history of trying to blaze new trails within the Cloud Service Provider market for eDiscovery and Information Governance, I am very encouraged by Mr. Harris's article and optimistic that at Amazon may be headed toward offering additional services to their clients such as analytics, eDiscovery and Information Governance. It may in fact be the key for Amazon to increasing the $1.19 Billion in revenue that AWS posted for 2011 to a much higher level than could have ever been imagined with just IaaS or even standard PaaS services. And, if Amazon doesn't get it or doesn't want to make a move on eDiscovery, I predict that one of the other CSPs will.<br />
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The full text of the Gigacom article by Dick Harris is as follows:<br />
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According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, Amazon’s cloud computing division could be a shining star (even if not too bright) on the company’s long road toward increased profit margins. However, while their forecast isn’t glowing, it also doesn’t account for the evolution of Amazon’s cloud business from pure infrastructure-as-a-service into higher-level (and higher-margin) services.<br />
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In the new research report published Monday morning, analysts Scott Devitt, Andrew Ruud and Nishant Verma come to a possibly disconcerting conclusion for any investors banking on Amazon for short-term returns. The report’s gist: “After analyzing Amazon.com’s cost structure in detail and by segment, we conclude that there are far more variable costs than investors believe, leading to an overly optimistic timeline for margin expansion.” But Amazon Web Services is an opportunity Amazon might be able to exploit.<br />
The report estimates that AWS was responsible for $1.19 billion in revenue in 2011 (I <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/dont-look-now-but-aws-might-be-a-billion-dollar-biz/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">predicted in October the business was on a billion-dollar run rate</span></a>), of which $108 million (or about 9 percent) was sheer profit. It’s able to maintain this margin while <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-cuts-prices-again-on-key-web-services/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">constantly dropping prices on its cloud services</span></a>, the report contends, because AWS uses a cost-plus pricing model. That is, it just adds a premium (about 10 percent) on top of the cost of delivering those services, which continue to drop as Amazon leverages its economies of scale to buy and operate more gear and bandwidth at lower prices.<br />
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Although AWS margins remain flat, the report notes that AWS also comprises a significant portion of Amazon’s overall technology spending, so being able to drive steady, predictable profit from it is a good thing. Non-AWS technology spending, the authors estimate, is about 4 percent of net sales — “represent[ing] the largest opportunity for operating margin expansion in the near-term.” Keeping those cost down means a greater percentage of revenue goes toward profit.<br />
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However, the Morgan Stanley report doesn’t address the possibility that AWS margins actually could start rising as the company expands its services beyond sheer infrastructure and into managed services. <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-launches-home-grown-nosql-database/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">Its NoSQL DynamoDB database service</span></a>, for example, is a service for which Amazon adds value (and cost) beyond just the delivery of cloud-based infrastructure, and there are <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/will-amazon-offer-analytics-as-a-service/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">lingering rumors of a big data analytics service</span></a> that will provide higher-level services than AWS’s existing Elastic MapReduce offering.<br />
We shouldn’t overlook the possibility of AWS expanding its licensing activities, either. As it becomes more entrenched as the de facto cloud computing platforms for many companies, providers of other services and software are keen to get on board. Already, <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-eucalyptus-partner-for-enterprise-cloud-just-dont-call-it-a-hybrid/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">private-cloud pioneer startup Eucalyptus has licensed the AWS API</span></a>, and Citrix <a href="http://gigaom.com/cloud/theres-a-new-open-source-cloud-in-town-meet-apache-cloudstack/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #64a0c8;">wants to do the same for its CloudStack software</span></a>. If it’s feeling greedy, Amazon could look to capitalize even further by charging others to integrate directly with its business.<br />
Or it could just give that cost-plus dial about a quarter turn.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-6388054862563517342012-04-04T12:26:00.002-06:002012-04-04T12:31:27.225-06:00Lawyer Certification on Predictive Coding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The eDiscovery Solutions Group Weekly Poll that ran from March 26, 2012 to April 2, 2012 asked whether or not lawyers should be able to explain the general technical and statistical mathematics supporting Predictive Coding to be able to utilize Predictive Coding during the eDiscovery and document coding process.<br />
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25% of the respondents to this poll indicated that lawyers should be famailiar with Predictive Coding to utilize it during the eDiscovery and document coding process. 62% of the respondents to this poll indicated that lawyers should be <strong>somewhat familiar</strong> with Predictive Coding to utilize it during the eDiscovery and document coding process. And, 12% of the respondents to this poll indicated that lawyers should not have to be familiar with Predictive Coding to utilize it during the eDiscovery and document coding process.<br />
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Given the fact that <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/Documents/JudePeckDecisiononDaSilvaMoore.pdf" target="_blank">Judge Peck's decision</a> is still being digested and there continues to be debate among the "technical experts" within the industry about the vetting process for Predictive Coding, many may not think that it is way too early to start worrying about whether or not lawyers understand the technical nuances of this new technology. However, I am not sure that the ABA Commission on Ethics would agree that "it is not yet time" as they are already addressing the question of what level of competence lawyers must have in applying IT concepts to the practice of law.<br />
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The technology of eDiscovery in general has leapfrogged any technology issues that most litigators have had to understand in the past. And, Predictive Coding and all of it's cousins in computer assisted eDiscovery and search, may in fact have leapfrogged the eDiscovery technology of just 2-3 years ago.<br />
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I am sure that the courts and the industry will fully vett Predictive Coding and develope the appropriate best practice for when and how it should be used. And, I am sure that ABA will figure out what level of competence lawyers must have in applying Predictive Coding. I just have to wonder if the results of this process isn't a tipping point for a changing of the guard within the legal ranks?<br /><br />And, since this whole "thing" is about providing equal access to the judicial system and adequate representation, let's hope they all get it right. Certification on Predictive Coding for lawyers or not.<br />
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<a href="http://bit.ly/px7c5z" target="_blank">Click Here</a> to review the results of this poll and the results of all of the eDSG Weekly Polls on hot topics within the eDiscovery and Information Governance market.<br />
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<br />Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-57245519943871680912012-04-03T11:17:00.002-06:002012-04-03T11:30:32.634-06:00Zoom to Predictive Coding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial;">Predictive coding has captured the imagination of the eDiscovery market. As a result, my daily conversations with members of the legal departments of the global 2000 and the eDiscovery professionals within the major law firms now routinely include questions about how predictive coding works, what predictive coding technologies are available and which predictive coding vendors I recommend. Therefore, in an effort to better serve my curious client base, I caught up with Warwick Sharp, co-founder and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Equivio, to learn more about their predictive coding platform.<br /><br />Founded in 2004 in Israel, Equivio began by developing and marketing near-duping and email thread management software. Its acquired a wide variety of clients, including hundreds of law firms, corporations, government entities and consulting organizations throughout the world. Its client base includes the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, KPMG and Deloitte. In addition, Equivio technology has also been a favorite integration partner among other litigation software vendors such as kCura and many of the well known litigation service providers.<br /><br />In early 2009, Equivio made the gutsy decision to enter the unknown and highly under appreciated predictive coding wilderness with Relevance, its standalone predictive coding platform. Along with a handful of other predictive coding pioneers such as <a href="http://www.recommind.com/" target="_blank">Recommind</a>, <a href="http://www.orcatec.com/" target="_blank">Orcatec</a> and <a href="http://www.xerox-xls.com/ediscovery/categorix.html" target="_blank">Xerox</a>, Equivio set out to convince the legal community that this new software with its complex mathematical algorithms and confusing statistical models could do a better (i.e. more statistically significant) job of identifying relevant documents than human reviewers. And, although I haven’t asked Equivio about the early financial returns on this bet, I would suspect that the initial missionary marketing efforts were tough and didn’t produce a financial return on their investment. However, Equivio didn’t give up. And, with the recent landmark court decision by Southern District of New York Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck on the </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/Documents/JudePeckDecisiononDaSilvaMoore.pdf" target="_blank">Da Silva Moore case</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: black;"> opening the flood gates for the legal tolerance for computer assisted review (aka predictive coding), they are now well positioned as one of the few legacy players in the predictive coding market.<br /><br />On January 23, 2012 Equivio launched Zoom, a single integrated platform for predictive coding and analytics. As reported in their initial press release, Zoom combines Equivio's best-of-breed near-duplicates, email threads and Relevance components together with data import and export, early case assessment and enriched analytics. These components are seamlessly integrated on a unified web-based platform for easy access and use. This past week, I had a chance to spend some time with Warwick and see Zoom in action.<br /><br />My first impression of Zoom is that it has an extremely intuitive and attractive web-based user interface that provides an easy to understand workflow management system to lead users through the process of collection, processing, analytics, first pass review with predictive coding and export. Support for collection, processing and initial culling appear to meet or maybe even exceed industry requirements to prepare data for initial review.<br /><br />From a more detailed standpoint, Zoom enables users to extract text and metadata from raw ingest and generates data profiles for Early Case Assessment (ECA). It then enables users to subject the data to multi-layered analysis, including de-duping, near-duping, email thread management and language detection. Zoom's search environment also supports keyword analysis and metadata faceting. <br /><br />From a predictive coding perspective, Zoom enables litigators to efficiently “train the system” to identify and assess documents for responsiveness and privilege with little or no knowledge beyond standard online document review best practices. The platform displays the complex, yet required, predictive coding statistics with easy to understand graphics and even provides users with the cost of review for the current level of statistical significance and the cost projections for increasing that percentage. Finally, Zoom exports native files, full text and metadata to the user’s review platform of choice. Please note that I have not tested the viability of Zoom’s predictive coding accuracy and therefore, for the purpose of this initial review, I am taking Equivio’s word that it meets or exceeds expectations for computer assisted document identification and that the results would hold up in court.<br /><br />I have designed, tested and used literally hundreds of Web-based applications over the years and I would rate Zoom among the best for easily guiding the user through a fairly complex process and providing an initial positive experience.<br /><br />And although Warwick was reluctant to position Zoom as an Early Case Assessment (ECA) tool, I believe that Zoom does in fact have the foundational architecture, features and a workflow that can mature into a formidable competitor in the ECA market. Whether or not Zoom fulfills this destiny will of course be up to Equivio and how they decide to position and market their new product.</span></span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: black;"><br />Given my position as an impartial industry analyst with the responsibility of being a trusted advisor to my clients and because there are other noteworthy predictive coding platforms on the market from vendors such as Recommind, Orcatec and Xerox, I am reticent to declare Zoom as the leading predictive coding platform in the industry.<br /><br />And, given the fact that eDiscovery Solutions Group, in partnership with DCIG, will be including Equivio in its 2012 Early Case Assessment Interactive Buyer’s Guide available in May 2012 and the 2012 Predictive Coding Interactive Buyers Guide available later this summer, buyers will have all of the objective information that they require to make their own decisions.<br /><br />However, after my initial review, Zoom should definitely be on any buyer’s short list of next generation eDiscovery platforms as it definitely provides the culling and analytics required for serious Early Case Assessment (ECA) and integrates an attractive and competent predictive coding component.<br /><br />For a more detailed overview of Zoom, you can contact me at: <a href="mailto:productbriefings@ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com">productbriefings@ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="color: black;"><br />For more information on Equivio and Zoom, please visit: <a href="http://www.equivio.com/">http://www.equivio.com/</a>.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=4270716" target="_blank">Click Here</a></span> to join the International Association of Predictive Coding</span></span></div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-49049509252672895512012-04-02T14:36:00.000-06:002012-04-04T09:08:38.517-06:00Executive Interview with CEO of CloudNine Discovery<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recently had the opportunity talk with </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=412797" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brad Jenkins</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, Founder and CEO of </span><a href="http://www.cloudninediscovery.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">CloudNine Discovery</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Mr. Jenkins and his team at CloudNine are pioneers in bringing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Document Review technology to the legal technology market. My Interview with Mr. Jenkins provides some interesting insight into the history of the litigation technology market and the genesis of CloudNine Discovery.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">History of CloudNine</span></strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br />CloudNine Discovery is a Houston based software and services company that has been around for about nine years. The company's </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">flagship product is OnDemand</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">®, which was one of the very first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications on the market for online document review and eDiscovery. In addition, CloudNine backs up its software offering with a full set of litigation services as may be required to support the requirements of large firms and corporations engaged in a lawsuit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />"We started out as a document imaging company, with a focus on the project management of large scanning and eDiscovery projects. One of our early clients was a large corporation that needed project management of a nationwide scanning project lasting over 2 years (10,000 boxes, 40+ locations). We managed the entire project including collection, scanning and coding. From the need for managing that data evolved our development of a web-based document management application, which is now OnDemand," explained Mr. Jenkins in regards to my request that he describe the history of CloudNine.<br /> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"We developed a solid reputation for project management and got to know our partners really well, so we got additional national projects and numerous inquiries from our partners requesting to offer our software to their clients. The software demand continued to grow and ultimately became our company focus while we assisted our partners with project management expertise in transitioning from providing scanning services to a full range of eDiscovery services, continued Mr. Jenkins.<br /><br />Mr. Jenkins was also proud of the fact that CloudNine Discovery has been included in several lists of fastest growing companies, including the Inc. 5000 list in 2008, 2009 and 2011, Houston FastTech 50 in 2007 and 2009, and Houston Fast 100 in 2008 and 2009.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Importance of SaaS Technology in eDiscovery</span></strong></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b><br />As the founder and CEO of one of the first SaaS technologies companies in the eDiscovery market, I was curious to learn what Mr. Jenkins thought about the importance of SaaS.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />"I see it as very important. I found it interesting that Gartner predicts that by 2013, SaaS and business process utilities will account for 75% of the expenses derived from processing, review, analysis and production of ESI," stated Mr. Jenkins.</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It’s also been reported that the Cloud Computing and Storage market is set to grow from 40.7 billion dollars in 2011 to more than 241 billion dollars by 2020. (Forrester forecasted in May 2011) This means more and more data will be stored in the cloud and companies will be looking to SaaS technology to help with discovery,: continued Mr. Jenkins.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />I can appreciate Mr. Jenkins predictions about SaaS. In fact, I predict that within five years that most eDiscovery technology will be SaaS based and most Electronically Stored Information (ESI) will reside in the cloud. As such, it appears that CloudNine is in a great position.</span><br /><strong><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monolithic vs. Best-in-class Technology</span></strong></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />I asked Mr. Jenkins if he thought that a monolithic solution that supported the entire EDRM or a best-in-class integrated approach was better.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;"><span id="goog_2099488242"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />"I believe in the best of class approach," stated Mr. Jenkins. "There are so many areas of the EDRM, it would be cost prohibitive for any one company to have the best expertise in every single area. Companies with dedicated resources focused on one area are going to have an advantage in supporting that particular area of the lifecycle versus a monolithic platform. Many of the monolithic platforms have come together through acquisitions and those don’t always work out as planned," added Mr. Jenkins.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial;">This is always an interesting debate. Some buyers want a single vendor to call knowing that the trade-off is that they may not get the best solution across the board. Other buyers are more interested in finding and integrating the best solutions and are willing to spend the extra resources to have to deal with </span>multiple <span style="font-family: Arial;">vendors.<br /><br />Something else to think about in regards to this issue is that as the industry embraces SaaS based technology in the cloud, it is going to be theoretically easier to integrate disparate applications in a much more seamless manner than has been the case outside the cloud and behind the firewall. I don't see the monolithic solutions going away, I just see the opportunity for users to have many more choices in the various categories of the EDRM.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></span></span><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">CloudNine in Five Year</strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b><br />I am always curious about a founder's vision and therefore I asked Mr. Jenkins about where he thought ClouldNine would be in five years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />"As our three-time presence on the Inc 5000 list demonstrates we are focused on continued growth. Our company mission is to simplify the discovery process through innovative technology, so we will continue to develop in our core expertise, which includes self-service SaaS and managed cloud hosting," stated Mr. Jenkins.<br /><br />If history is any indicator of the future, than CloudNine has a very bright future. However, I would add that with all of the consolidation going on within the eDiscovery market that providers such as CloudNine might in fact be an attractive takeover target (Please note that I am note aware of any pending transactions involving CloudNine. I am merely stating my opinion about its future).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/index-interviews.html" target="_blank">Click Here</a> to read the full text of Mr. Jenkin's interview on the eDiscovery Solutions website.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For more information about CloudNine, please visit it's website at: </span><a href="http://www.cloudninediscovery.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">http://www.cloudninediscovery.com/</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-44200538857743521722012-03-20T08:33:00.003-06:002012-03-20T08:44:47.541-06:00eDiscovery Will Follow the Cloud Computing Boom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The National Inflation Association (NIA) reported this week that after years of rumors about cloud computing going mainstream around the world, the cloud computing boom is now finally here. They predict that by the year 2013, cloud computing could become a bigger boom on Wall Street than the dot-com boom was in the year 2000. Cloud computing is currently a $74 billion industry that accounts for 3% of global IT spending, but in 2013 cloud computing is expected to become a $150 billion market. <br />
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The NAI further stated that 2012 will be remembered as the year in which cloud computing started to become widely adopted worldwide. Cloud computing is expected to create 14 million new jobs globally by year 2015. In the consumer space, Gartner is predicting that cloud services will be on 90% of personal consumer devices by year 2015 so that consumers can store, connect, stream, and synchronize content across multiple platforms at different locations.<br />
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Industry analyst are heralding the explosion in the Cloud computing market as great news for the Cloud Service Providers (CSP). According to a forecast from independent technology analyst firm Ovum, the global public cloud services market will more than triple in size over the next five years to reach revenue of $66 billion in 2016 and the market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.4 percent from the $18 billion it reached at the end of 2011. Ovum goes on to report that in terms of the cloud computing service lines, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will shrink from 87 percent of the market in 2011 to 62 percent in 2016 due to the rise of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), which will grow from 9 percent and 5 percent, respectively, to 23 percent and 16 percent by the end of the forecast period.<br />
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And, there are numerous other studies by most of the major international industry analysts that predict a dramatic increase in the size of just about everything having to do with Cloud computing.<br />
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However, it is my impression that the inevitable and potentially dramatic increase in the demand for eDiscovery and Information Governance due to this explosion of the Cloud computing market, is flying under the radar of most analysts. eDiscovery and Information Governance professionals know full well that there is a linear and possibly an expontial relationship between the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and the demands and cost of identification, collection, analysis, processing and production of that ESI.<br />
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In 2011, Gartner predicted that the eDiscovery market would reach $1.5 Billion in revenue by 2013. And, depending upon which analyst you follow (and believe), the size of the Information Governance market is anywhere from 2X to 10X the size of the eDiscovery market. I believe that all of these forecasts are extremely low.<br />
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Further, a recent study by <a href="http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/" target="_blank">eDSG</a> on "<a href="http://www.free-press-release.com/news-2012-edsg-study-on-how-cloud-service-providers-support-ediscovery-and-information-governance-1331158526.html" target="_blank">How Cloud Service Providers Support eDiscovery and Information Governance</a>" as reported on this <a href="http://ediscoveryconsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/results-of-2012-edsg-investigation-of.html" target="_blank">blog</a> on March 7, 2012, indicated that 95% of the Cloud Service Providers and 98% of the general counsel from the global 2000 (based on participation in the survey) did not have a plan for responding to eDiscovery and Information Governance requests for ESI residing in CSP facilities.<br />
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In summary, my prediction is that the explosion in the size of the Cloud computing market as reported by the National Inflation Association is really good news for any of the technology and service providers, along with their investors, that are planning to support eDiscovery and Information Governance in the Cloud. As the name of this blog implies, the eDiscovery paradigm shift is underway and the demand of Cloud computing is only going to make that shift and the associated size of the market even bigger.<br />
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The full text of the press release by the National Inflation Association: <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cloud-computing-is-new-wall-street-boom-says-nia-2012-03-20">http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cloud-computing-is-new-wall-street-boom-says-nia-2012-03-20</a>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-28490566867226400652012-03-08T22:26:00.003-07:002012-03-08T22:43:42.178-07:00New York Appellate Court: Disintegration of Business Relationship Requires Preservation of ESI<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBSMuO98VOs8UaYuVo8VHeA1k039t8cw3Z2QPUtIzav4DraMJFP5OzGNHY7macKdg0tgHvK_BU1nVVUxXPY6m0vBmrMKve1VLvv2y8fLSiA21BkgRGAYQ9WhnbWxN2YeNiLi4RoP0VtGY/s1600/MC900436748.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBSMuO98VOs8UaYuVo8VHeA1k039t8cw3Z2QPUtIzav4DraMJFP5OzGNHY7macKdg0tgHvK_BU1nVVUxXPY6m0vBmrMKve1VLvv2y8fLSiA21BkgRGAYQ9WhnbWxN2YeNiLi4RoP0VtGY/s320/MC900436748.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717768883919267794" /></a><br /><br />Recently in VOOM v. EchoStar, 2012 NY Slip Op. 00658 (Jan. 31, 2012) the Supreme Court, Appellate Division of New York entered upheld a lower court’s decision imposing sanctions against EchoStar for spoliation of ESI. The most striking portion of this decision is the requirement that when a business relationship disintegrates and a party terminates a contract, it should reasonably anticipate litigation and implement a litigation hold. <br /><br />The Appellate Division noted that the standard for preservation was that adopted in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 (S.D. NY 2003) and Pension Comm. Of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of Am. Sec., LLC, 685 F. Supp. 2d 456, 473 (S.D.NY 2010). Here the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court clearly adopted the standard from two federal district court decisions. The Appellate Court noted that the standard for preservation set forth in both cases “has been widely adopted by federal and state courts.”<br /><br />The applicable standard should now be well-known to those involved in the industry. The Appellate Division noted that “In Zubulake, the federal district court stated, ‘Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a litigation hold’ to ensure the preservation of relevant documents.” The Appellate Court stated that the Zubulake standard “is harmonious with New York precedent in the traditional discovery context, and provides litigants with sufficient certainty as to the nature of their obligations in the electronic discovery context and when those obligations are triggered.”<br /><br />In this case, Voom and EchoStar entered into an contract in which EchoStar agreed to distribute Voom’s television programming. EchoStar allegedly wanted to end the contract or change its terms. EchoStar sent letters to Voom alleging “material breaches” of the contractual programming requirements. Voom became concerned that the matter was going to be litigated and implemented a litigation hold, including automatically preserving emails. EchoStar’s auditor concluded the Voom had complied with the terms of the agreement. EchoStar began discussing “potential litigation” and these discussions continued until Voom filed suit. EchoStar did not implement a litigation hold until after Voom filed suit. This litigation hold did not suspend EchoStar’s automatic deletion of emails. So, emails sent and deleted by an employee were automatically and permanently deleted after seven days. Not until four months after filing of the lawsuit and one year after EchoStar was on notice of anticipated litigation did EchoStar suspend automatic deletion of relevant emails.<br /><br />Voom sought spoliation sanctions from the court and its motion was granted. The court found that “EchoStar’s concession that termination would lead to litigation, together with the evidence establishing EchoStar’s intent to terminate, its various breach notices sent to VOOM HD, its demand and express reservation of rights, all support the conclusion that EchoStar must have reasonably anticipated litigation prior to the commencement of this action.”<br /><br />From the decision it is difficult to understand how EchoStar conceded that termination would lead to litigation. It is also unclear from the decision how the courts knew that “EchoStar executives began discussing ‘potential litigation’ but the Appellate Court did note that according to privilege logs, those conversations continued until Voom filed suit. If those concessions had not taken place, would the outcome have been different? Certainly the courts would not have found that litigation was reasonably anticipated just because EchoStar sent breach notices to Voom and its demand and express reservation of rights under the agreement would not have been enough. <br /><br />Or would it? EchoStar argued that “in the absence of pending litigation’ or notice of a specific claim,’ defendant should not be sanctioned for discarding items in good faith and pursuant to normal business practices.” The Appellate Division disagreed, stating “[t]o adopt a rule requiring actual litigation or notice of a specific claim ignores the reality of how business relationships disintegrate.” The Court said that both sides may appear to be attempting to work things out while frantically preparing for litigation behind the scenes. The Appellate Court noted that to adopt EchoStar’s argument would encourage parties who actually anticipate litigation, but do not yet have knowledge of a “specific claim” to destroy documents with impunity.<br /><br />The Appellate Court stated that EchoStar should have reasonably anticipated litigation on the date it sent a letter to Voom demanding an audit and threatening termination of the contract. The Court said this was especially true in light of testimony that EchoStar knew that Voom would sue if EchoStar terminated the agreement.<br /><br />But what if EchoStar did not know whether Voom would sue if it terminated the agreement? Contracts are terminated every day without knowledge whether or not the other party will sue. Does the Appellate Division really suggest that in each case a litigation hold must be implemented? The decision could certainly be read to require such litigation holds. This would certainly broaden the scope of the “reasonably anticipated” standard of litigation holds.<br /><br />The courts also noted that EchoStar relied upon its employees to determine which emails were relevant in response to litigation and to preserve them by moving them into separate folders. The court noted “EchoStar’s purported litigation hold failed to turn off the automatic delete function and merely asked its employees—many of whom, presumably were not attorneys—to determine whether documents were potentially responsive to litigation, and to then remove each one from EchoStar’s pre-set path of destruction.” Clearly, this behavior is not appropriate. <br /><br />The trial court concluded that relevant documents had been destroyed by EchoStar. The court also noted that even if the duty to preserve began on the date of the filing of the complaint, EchoStar still violated its duty since it lost several emails over a four-day period. The Appellate Division held that the destruction of ESI was in bad faith and with gross negligence and, therefore, Voom did not need to prove the relevance of the evidence.<br /><br />The Appellate Division upheld the sanctions imposed by the trial court. But, did it go too far in its analysis?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-11591386027330449172012-03-07T12:39:00.001-07:002012-03-07T14:35:04.085-07:00Results of the 2012 eDSG Investigation of Cloud Service Providers and eDiscovery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglyNN8tsJqUZA9sGmPfgW5Nl0aT0pDudXLEcKdCv3lDQLHOnq8QmCk86YR-dqhMomP8TPQe6FA0deVbpQXe_ee-jN6GlocTvXkf8Ek_wib-gRqhu2iZmN-owGs-IYK5WGoo3k4szY6xPdL/s1600/2012StudyofCSPs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglyNN8tsJqUZA9sGmPfgW5Nl0aT0pDudXLEcKdCv3lDQLHOnq8QmCk86YR-dqhMomP8TPQe6FA0deVbpQXe_ee-jN6GlocTvXkf8Ek_wib-gRqhu2iZmN-owGs-IYK5WGoo3k4szY6xPdL/s320/2012StudyofCSPs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Over the past 90 days I have been investigating how Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and their clients are managing eDiscovery and Information Governance in the CSP clouds. I interviewed and studied the public policies of over 60 CSPs and also talked to the general counsel, IT executives and business line managers of over 50 global 2000 organizations that were currently utilizing a CSP, 25 organizations that were considering utilizing a CSP and 10 organization that were not currently utilizing or considering utilizing a CSP.<br />
<br />
<div>
The results of this investigation are as follows: </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong><u>THE STATISTICAL RESULTS</u></strong> </div>
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</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong>Understanding of eDiscovery?</strong></div>
<div>
I asked the participants if they understood the general requirements and practice of eDiscovery.</div>
<ul>
<li>95% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
<li>98% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>65% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>90% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong>Understanding of Information Governance?</strong></div>
<div>
I asked the participants if they understood the general requirements and practice of Information Governance.</div>
<ul>
<li>75% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
<li>95% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>85% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>75% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>Global 2000 eDiscovery Policy for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) stored with a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the global 2000 participants if they had an eDiscovery policy for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) stored with a CSP.</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>90% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>90% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>99% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>CSP eDiscovery Policy for Clients?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the CSP participants if they had an eDiscovery policy for their clients.</div>
<ul>
<li>98% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>Global 2000 Information Governance Policy for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) stored with a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the global 2000 participants if they had an Information Governance policy for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) stored with a CSP.</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>92% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>75% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>99% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>CSP Information Governance Policy for Clients?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the CSP participants if they had an Information Governance policy for their clients.</div>
<ul>
<li>98% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>Consider eDiscovery When Choosing a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the global 2000 participants if they considered eDiscovery when choosing a CSP. </div>
<ul>
<li>100% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>99% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>100% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>Consider Information Governance When Choosing a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the global 2000 participants if they considered eDiscovery when choosing a CSP. </div>
<ul>
<li>100% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>99% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
<li>100% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did not.</li>
</ul>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong>Does Your CSP Organization consider eDiscovery to be a Client's Issue?</strong>I asked the CSP participants if they consider eDiscovery to be a Client's Issue?</div>
<div>
</div>
<ul>
<li>100% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did.</li>
</ul>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong>Does Your CSP Organization consider Information Governance to be a Client's Issue?</strong>I asked the CSP participants if they consider Information Governance to be a client's Issue?</div>
<div>
</div>
<ul>
<li>100% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did.</li>
</ul>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<strong>Would You Consider an eDiscovery Offering as a Key Competitive Advantage?</strong></div>
<div>
I asked the participants if they would consider eDiscovery to be a key competitive advantage. </div>
<ul>
<li>25% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
<li>75% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>85% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>90% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
</ul>
Please note that I believe that by the time I got this part of the interview that many of the participants were beginning to understand the value of an eDiscovery and/or Information Governance offering by CSP and therefore this new found understanding may have influenced their answers.<br />
<br />
<div>
</div>
<div>
<strong>Would You Consider an Information Governance Offering as a Key Competitive Advantage?</strong></div>
<div>
I asked the participants if they would consider eDiscovery to be a key competitive advantage. </div>
<ul>
<li>25% of the CSPs indicated and proved throughout the interview that they did not.</li>
<li>75% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>85% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>90% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
</ul>
Please note that I believe that by the time I got this part of the interview that many of the participants were beginning to understand the value of an eDiscovery and/or Information Governance offering by CSP and therefore this new found understanding may have influenced their answers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Experienced an eDiscovery Event with a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I asked the global 2000 participants if they had experienced an eDiscovery event with aCSP. </div>
<ul>
<li>45% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>55% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>5% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>90% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they were not sure.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong>Experienced an Information Governance Event with a CSP?</strong><br />
<div>
I aksed the global 2000 participants if they had experienced an Information Governance event with aCSP. </div>
<ul>
<li>45% of the general counsel from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>55% of the IT executives from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>5% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they did.</li>
<li>90% of the business line managers from the global 2000 indicated that they were not sure.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<strong><u>COMMENTS</u></strong><br />
<br />
<div>
Without having to source any of the statistics on the accelerating increase in the amount of ESI that is being moved to the cloud, it is sufficient to assume that this trend is just beginning and will continue for the foreseeable future. As such, the requirements for eDiscovery and Information Governance of this ESI will also be increasing for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is a strategic mistake for either CSPs or their clients to not be considering how this ever increasing volume ESI (in the CSPs cloud) is going to be identified, harvested, analyzed and process for the purpose of eDiscovery and Information Governance.<br />
<br />
Given my position as stated in the previous paragrph, it is an understatement to say that after about the first 2 weeks of these interviews, I was shocked to learn that most of the executives from the CSPs didn't really even understand the significance of eDiscovery and Information Governance and as a result had nothing implemented nor anything in their product road maps to support eDiscovery or information governance.<br />
<br />
As an attempt to be fair and, even though I don't agree, it is at least somewhat understandable that the CSPs that consider themselves to be providers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) only, support for eDiscovery and Information Governance may in fact be outside their legacy offerings. However, I am stunned at the lack of understanding and interest for eDiscovery and/or Information Governance among the CSPs that are offering general cloud storage or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).</div>
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I was also very disappointed to learn that most of the executives from the global 2000 organizations that I interviewed did not consider support for eDiscovery and Information Governance as a criteria for choosing a CSP.<br />
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<strong><u>RECOMMENDATIONS</u></strong><br />
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<div>
Based upon the results of this investigation along with my associated experience with the policies, technologies and best practices available to support eDisocvery and Information Governance in the cloud, my recommendation for CSPs and any organization that is planning to utilize a CSP is a follows:</div>
<br />
<div>
<strong>Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)</strong>My recommendations for CSPs is as follows:</div>
<div>
</div>
<ul>
<li>Develop an internal understanding and experience of eDiscovery and Information Governance.</li>
<li>Talk to your prospects and clients about their eDiscovery and Information Governance requirements.</li>
<li>Educate and train all customer facing personnel on the importance of eDiscovery and Information Governance and how your organization plans to support it.</li>
<li>Develop a public policy for supporting eDiscovery and Information Governance.</li>
<li>Form partnerships with eDiscovery and Information Governance technology providers and consultants as part of your offering.</li>
<li>Leverage and eDiscovery and Information Governance offering as a key competitive advantage.</li>
</ul>
<strong></strong> <br />
<strong>Prospects and Clients of CSPs</strong> <br />
<div>
</strong>My recommendation for prospects and clients of CSPs is as follows: </div>
<ul>
<li>Encourage collaboration in regards to eDiscovery and Information Governance between general counsel, IT and business line managers.</li>
<li>Develop a eDiscovery and Information Governance policy for ESI stored with CSPs.</li>
<li>Develop a set of eDiscovery and Information Governance support criteria for choosing a CSP.</li>
<li>Don't accept an answer of "we don't support eDiscovery and/or Information Governance" from a CSP.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<u><strong>PREDICTIONS</strong></u><br />
<br /><br />The CSP target market is going to start demanding support for both eDiscovery and Information Governance. And, those CSPs that offer it will indeed have a key competitive advantage over those that do not. The results could spell a signficant reshuffling of the current major players in CSP market.Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8262911310217101208.post-66226263348235099312012-03-06T12:54:00.001-07:002012-03-08T16:41:51.299-07:00A Day in the Life of the Internet May be a Nightmare for eDiscovery and Information Governance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY66Q3UvcEOHyud8L36d700HmJ1k9hxGBRS0Hpc2bq4xio-jGBIYzJg5QJb0-4YCOzT4WYQKOLZd3NnIBxccCGDrm_3wUbfetzvZvu_nrEf4fHmb2ewYRJqfUUx-2QHdBrRi8Odf8HYR8a/s1600/a-day-in-the-internet-A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY66Q3UvcEOHyud8L36d700HmJ1k9hxGBRS0Hpc2bq4xio-jGBIYzJg5QJb0-4YCOzT4WYQKOLZd3NnIBxccCGDrm_3wUbfetzvZvu_nrEf4fHmb2ewYRJqfUUx-2QHdBrRi8Odf8HYR8a/s320/a-day-in-the-internet-A.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Our daily life increasingly revolves around blog posts, emails, and status updates. The folks at <a href="http://www.mbaonline.com/a-day-in-the-internet/" itxtharvested="0" itxtnodeid="5"><span style="color: #1d637d;">mbaonline</span></a> provide a snapshot of what happens in one day on the Internet.<br />
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Some of the statistics are almost hard to beleive. As an example, we send 294 billion emails everyday. And, we spend 4.7 million minutes on Facebook and upload 250 million photos everyday.<br /><br />What were we doing with that 4.7 million minutes before Facebook? And, of course the big question is how is the pre-occupation with social media impacting productivity. That's all interesting. But, the topic of my post today is about eDiscovery and Information Governance.<br />
Following is a summary of this snapshot:<br />
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<ul>
<li>In one day, enough information is consumed to fill 168 million DVDs </li>
<li>294 billion emails are sent </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">2 million blog posts are written </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">173 million different people visit Facebook </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">4.7 million minutes are spent on Facebook (what were people during before?) </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">22 million hours of old TV shows and movies are watched on Netflix </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">846,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">18.7 million hours of music is streamed through Pandora </li>
<li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">35 million apps are downloaded to mobile devices </li>
</ul>
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As an analyst of the eDiscovery and Information Governance market, each of these statistics indicates to me that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in regards to the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and potentially relevant legal evidence that will need to be indentified, collected, processed (normalized), analyzed and produced.</div>
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My conclusion is that the eDiscovery and Information Governance market is and is going to continue to be an extremely interesting place to work. And, it is going to be an industry that is going to have to accelerate its use of technology as there are not enough lawyers and paralegals in the world to manually review all of this ESI and potentially responsive evidence.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-that-happens-in-one-day-on-the-internet-2012-3" target="_blank"><span style="color: #7289d0;">Click Here</span></a> for a link to the original article and graphic.</div>Charles Skamserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10622092150570721966noreply@blogger.com0