Time for the Next Generation of Cloud Leadership

The cloud computing market is the now the "big thing" and there are hard revenue facts to back up that claim.  As an example, independent 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 “Sizing the Cloud”. 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.

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.

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 Kodak. While they clung to the familiar the world changed and they were caught unable to catch up. The familiar was their nemesis.

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.This begs the question about whether or not it might be time for the next generation of cloud technology leadership?

In 2011, I just got a chance to read a really interesting article titled, "Above the Cloud: The Next Generation of Cloud Leadership", published on November 9, 2011 by Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz. The basic premise of the article is that to 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.

Having just completed and published an in depth study of Information Governance and eDiscovery Practices for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that found several alarming flaws in cloud leadership with both vendors and the enterprise, I re-read the 2011 article by Darren Cinti, Matt Aiello and Jason Kranz with a more informed perspective.

General Issues with Cloud Provider Leadership

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 Amazon and RackSpace 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 Marketplace offering 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.

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?

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.

This leads us to an examination of the hundreds if not thousands of Software-a-Service (SaaS) providers.  Building upon the multi-billion dollar success of salesforce.com, 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 "Crossing the Chasm" 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.

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.

The last group that I am going to comment on in regards to cloud providers are the big legacy software providers such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.  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".

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.

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.

General Issues with Cloud User Leadership

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.

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.

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.

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.

Conclusion

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.

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.

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.

Under any circumstances, being a part of this paradigm shift is nothing less than spectacular.

Labels: Amazon, AWS, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, CSPs, eDiscovery, IBM, Kodak, Microsoft, Oracle, Rackspace

posted by Charles Skamser @ 11:34 AM 0 Comments

Virtualization is the Key to Future eDiscovery Software

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.

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.

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.

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 Amazon (AWS) and Rackspace 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.

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.

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.

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.

So, in the next several weeks, as a lead in to the release of the eDSG/DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Interactive Buyer's Guide, I will be publishing several articles on which eDiscovery software vendors have eDiscovery software that was designed to run in a virtual environment.

Labels: Amazon, AWS, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, CSPs, Early Case Assessment, eDiscovery, Rackspace, Virtual

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:47 PM 1 Comments

eDiscovery Will Follow the Cloud Computing Boom

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Further, a recent study by eDSG on "How Cloud Service Providers Support eDiscovery and Information Governance" as reported on this blog 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.

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.

The full text of the press release by the National Inflation Association: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cloud-computing-is-new-wall-street-boom-says-nia-2012-03-20

Labels: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, CSP, Early Case Assessment, eDiscovery, Information Governance, Law, Legal, Legal Technology, Litigation

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:33 AM 0 Comments

Navigating eDiscovery in the Cloud Shouldn't Be That Difficult

In a follow up to my Blog post titled, "eDiscovery in the Cloud: The Sky Is Not Falling", this Blog post is dedicated to the premise that successfully navigating eDiscovery in the cloud is not as complicated as many are indicating it should be or as complicated as many are making it.

Successfully navigating the brave new world of eDiscovery in the cloud is really just a matter of education and a willingness to move beyond the status quo.  There is no doubt that if you don't pay attention, you and your team will perish on the rocks. However, don't pass on taking the eDiscovery in the cloud journey because it is too dangerous or give up before you at least make an attempt to learn how to save your ship.

First of all, in case anyone missed the memo, the cloud train has left the station.  As an example, independent research firm Forrester Research predicted in a research report published earlier this year titled, “Sizing the Cloud” that the global cloud computing market would reach $241 billion in 2020 compared to $40.7 in 2010.  So, more than likely, whether you want your data in the cloud or not, it is moving quicker than you think.  And, as an end-user, unless you have some kind of cloud storage phobia, it really shouldn't matter that much.  The real debate doesn't start until you couch the question(s) about cloud computing in terms of what happens when your have to perform the delicate and often times messy operation of eDiscovery in the cloud.  If you are a glutton for punishment and like to dwell on all of the negative things that could possible happen in the life then I encourage you to read "The Promise of the Cloud Meets the Obligations of E-Discovery", published on the Law.com website on October 12, 2011 by Brendan M. Schulman and Samantha V. Ettari.  This article does a great job of indicating that the sky is falling and that we are all doomed.  However, as I indicated in the my response to this piece, "cloud computing has already made it and most of us are just fine, eDiscovery in the cloud and all!!"  But, the devil is always in the details and therefore what does this mean in practical terms?

Further, please note that if you are currently doing a bad job of eDiscovery in general, you had better read the Schulman and Ettari article as the sky is going to fall if you attempt to perform eDiscovery in the cloud under your current practices. Once you have completed reading that article and if you still want a road map for successful implementation of eDiscovery in the cloud, come back and finish reading this blog post.

What is eDiscovery in the Cloud?To properly perform eDiscovery in the cloud,  you first have to understand what it is and, probably more importantly, what it is not.  The current crop of litigation technology vendors have done a great job of confusing the market in regards to eDiscovery in the cloud.  However, I believe that over the next 12-18 months, the market will become much more educated and some amount of consensus will begin to form regarding a more realistic and concise definition of eDiscovery in the cloud.

eDiscovery in the cloud is NOT uploading all of your potentially responsive ESI to a litigation service provider's data center and then accessing that ESI via the Internet to perform searches and document review.  That may be Early Case Assessment (ECA) or document review delivered under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.  But, it is not eDiscovery in the cloud.

Likewise, eDiscovery in the cloud is NOT manually collecting big chunks (that's a technical term) of potentially responsive ESI from your cloud provider and the performing eDiscovery with that ESI the same way you process ESI from your corporate network or from unconnected desktops and laptops (BTW - I am in the process of investigating the nightmare of collecting ESI from your cloud provider and plan to author a Blog post of my findings before the end of the year.  So, if anyone has any input, send it to me and I will consider including it in my post).

eDiscovery in the cloud ultimately means having a virtual eDiscovery process that actually runs in the cloud right alongside of your cloud storage and allows you to perform, Early Case Assessment (ECA) including First Pass Review, possibly preservation and legal hold management, definitely forensically sound collection and the generation of an industry standard load file and/or full on document review and production.  In addition, eDiscovery in the cloud also means that you can operate these processes remotely through an Internet based user interface and don't have to have operational bodies physically inside the cloud data center(s) to perform any of the normal magic that is currently required by many of the legacy hosted eDiscovery platforms. 

Further, eDiscovery in the cloud should also include what I am going to call (for lack of a better term at this point) federated eDiscovery to enable an organization to "perform eDiscovery" on data no matter where it resides.  Currently, users that are supported by competent IT organizations, don't have to worry about where ESI is physically located.  Therefore, eDiscovery professionals shouldn't have to worry either.  This would include ESI behind the corporate firewall, housed with different cloud service providers or housed with the same cloud service providers in different data centers potentially in different countries (don't get me started on the debate regarding the legal issues with moving ESI in and out of countries as that is the topic of a future Blog post). Please note that I am not oblivious to the challenges of moving large amounts of data around.  However, we all might be surprised to learn that class 5 rapids have been successfully navigated in other industries.

Is this Definition Realistic
This definition of eDiscovery in the cloud may sound like something that only Scotty, the engineer from the Star Trek Enterprise, could cobble together with technology from the next century and a good amount of duct tape.  However, the technology exists today and is ready to be utilized with little or no duct tape required.  Therefore, the only real speed bumps on this journey will be convincing the cloud service providers to install the appropriate eDiscovery technology as a standard part of their technology stack, enlisting a new generation of eDiscovery consultants to support the development of best practices for eDiscovery in the cloud and finally to show the market that eDiscovery is no longer a reason to NOT move your data to cloud.  I realize that these are not insignificant roadblocks.  However, providing eDiscovery as a standard part of it's technology stack is a homerun for cloud service providers and the associated services represents a blue water/green field market opportunity for eDiscovery consultants and possibly service provides. Therefore, resistance should be minimal and buy-in should be quick.

What's Next?
In the coming weeks I will be releasing my initial list of eDiscovery technology vendors that can support my vision of eDiscovery in the cloud along with an initial overview of the best practices.  If anyone has any input that you believe should be included in these upcoming Blog posts, send them to me and I will consider including them.

In the mean time, if you are concerned with moving your data to the cloud and are hesitant because you are concerned about eDiscovery or if you are currently faced with the daunting task of extracting your ESI from a cloud service provider, contact me as I can help you successfully navigate your way through this paradigm shift.

Labels: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, CSPs, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Best Practices, Electronically Stored Information, ESI

posted by Charles Skamser @ 2:03 PM 1 Comments

Navigating into the New World of Information Governance

Over the past six (6) months I have spend many hours talking to CEOs, the General Counsel and CIOs of some the largest companies in the world about information governance and eDiscovery. And, the common theme has been that there is a tremendous amount of confusion in regards to where the market is headed and which technologies and outside consulting services they should be using.  And, probably the most urgent question is how much is all of this going to cost and what will the impact be on my business and career.

The volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is increasing at an accelerating rate, the migration to the cloud is a fait accompli, electronic communication platforms (i.e. social media) are mutating quicker than most of us can keep up and now email is no longer the number one target for eDiscovery searches (Source: Email slips as ediscovery target says Symantec).   There is no doubt that the IT world and therefore the information governance and eDiscovery world are in the middle of a paradigm shift.  As such, the Global 2000 need to quickly figure out how to survive in this new world or parish.

As Geoffrey Moore states in Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past, "enterprises.. need to overcome the pull of the past and reorient their organizations to meet a new era of competition."  In other words and in the context of information governance and eDiscovery, litigation and compliance aren't about copying, scanning and reviewing paper documents anymore and its time for BIG changes.

This Blog post is the first in a series of Blog posts that I am working on to provide some insight and guidance to the Global 2000 and by association to the vendors that serve the Global 2000 in regards to how to succeed through this paradigm shift.

eDiscovery is a Subset of Information Governance
The processes, procedures and technologies that are required to support eDiscovery are the same basic set of "tools" that are required to support the much larger and broader demands of information governance.  Therefore, I contend that the Global 2000 should consider designing, implementing and maintaining a single comprehensive information discovery platform that supports both information governance and eDiscovery.  After all, its really all about federated data / big data consolidation, search and analytics. Please note that I plan to dedicate an entire Blog Post to this topic later this year.

It's Strategic
Global 2000 stakeholders can no longer afford to view information governance and eDiscovery from a tactical standpoint and only prioritize it when there is a pending law suite or compliance issue.  Information Governance and eDiscovery need to be considered strategic business imperatives within the boardrooms of the Global 2000.

Its in the Cloud
If the board of directors and senior management from any Global 2000 organization don't know about the cloud or think that cloud is just some passing fade, they need to replaced or retire.  Cloud computing and all of its associated technologies and capabilities (i.e. mobile computing and social media) are the most significant changes in IT that has happened since the introduction of the PC.  And, to drive the point home even further, according to Forrester Research, the global cloud market is set to explode in the next 10 years, growing from $40.7bn in 2011 to more than $241bn in 2020.  Further, the resulting impact on the way that we now MUST and can conduct business is enormous. Please note that I plan to dedicate an entire Blog Post to this topic later this year.

Information Governance and eDiscovery in the Cloud
As a logical extension of the fact that IT has moved to the cloud, the board of directors and senior management from Global 2000 organizations need to also realize that information governance and eDiscovery also need to move to the cloud.  The same basic processes and technologies that are required to support eDiscovery fulfill the basic requirements of information governance.  Its really all about consolidating ESI/ federated data/big data, search and analytics anyway.  Whether its for information governance or eDiscovery shouldn't matter at the core.  Please note that I plan to dedicate an entire Blog Post to this topic later this year.

Who to Trust
As indicated int he opening paragraph of this Blog post, these dramatic changes have a tremendous amount of confusion among Global 2000 stakeholders in regards to where the market is headed and which technologies and outside consulting services they should be using.   This is always a BIG question during a paradigm shift.  And, it is even a bigger question during this paradigm shift because the stakes are so high.

However, the answer is complicated.  First of all, it is highly likely that only a small percentage of your stable of legacy trusted advisors will be of any use in this new paradigm.  When markets change, there is a natural turnover of experts and consultants.  And, it is even more likely that an even smaller percentage of your current technology providers will have solutions that work in this new paradigm. As is the case with the natural turnover with consultants, BIG changes in markets also cause big changes in the fabric of the technology vendor communities that service those markets.  As an example, we have already seen Symantec acquire ClearWell (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-symantec-idUSTRE74I7D020110519) and HP acquire Autonomy (http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/18/hp-autonomy-idINN1E77H1QO20110818).  And, believe me, this is just the beginning of the consolidation and restructuring of the players that service this market.

So, my advice is to move slowly, listen, read, investigate and don't be afraid to make a change.  After all, the future success of your business and  your career may depend upon the decisions that you make over the next 6-12 months regarding who you partner with to navigate through this brave new world.

Labels: Cloud, Early Case Assessment, eDiscvoery, Information Governance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:45 AM 0 Comments

Updates and Comments from ILTA 2011

First of all, it is no surprise that there is a flurry of product announcements at the ILTA Conference/Tradeshow.  It is obvoiusly a great place to announce new stuff.  However, havning run several large scale enterprise class software development teams, it always amazes me how the development cycles magically cooincide with the major tradeshows.  I guess that this observations fits into the category of sofware is done when management says that it is done?

Anyway, Evan based his product announcement list on the premise that these technology enhancements would reduce costs but then cited an article and comments by Katey Wood from industry analyst ESG that stated findings from an interview process of corporate lawyers indicated that, "Most corporate counsel, even among heavy litigants with large law firm bills, still don't track e-discovery expenses closely."  Wood's findings are somewhat different to conversations that I have had with C level execs from the global 2000 regarding the cost of information governance and eDiscovery.  Whereas the corporate lawyers didn't seem overly concerned about costs (i.e. not unusual for laywers in my experience), the C level execs (i.e. CIO, CEO and even GC's) were literally horrified by the billing practices of their outside counsel and the resulting high cost of eDiscovery.  They all believe that they can bring eDiscovery in house and reduce costs and also beleive that the cloud is going to be a major factor in not only reducing costs but in also increasing productivity. I would suspect that this gap in interest in cost is a cultural issue that the entperise is already aware of and will address on a case by case basis (if you know what I mean!!).

Now, on to the list of vendors and their respective announcements. First of all, its a great time to be a technology vendor in information governance and eDiscovery.  And, its an even greater time to be sitting on real cloud based technology (i.e. multi-tennant, etc.) and advanced next generation search.  As such, I would suggest that users investigate each of these vendors and their announcements based on their ablity to be relevant in the new paradigm of information governance and eDiscovery in the cloud and provide support for truly next generation search.  Given this criteria, some of these vendors will not make the cut.

Given all of this along with some other insight, my list of technology vendors to be watching over the remainder of 2011 and into 2012 would include (please note that some of these vendors are not on Evan's list because they are not making product announcement at ILTA 2011):

CaseCentral
Nuix (actually announced a new version last week)
DigitalReef
StoredIQ
Exterro
Orcatec (have integrated its components and completely redone its user interface)
Serviant (look for them to make some major noise in integrated predictive coding)
HP (the Autonomy acquisistion puts them on my list)
IBM (seem to be making some moves in pure eDiscovery)

In regards to the other issues that Evan covers in this article, I beleive that that ultimate winner in predictive coding (BTW - I really hate that term and would prefer to use machine learning), is going to be the vendor(s) that have a completely integrated solution through the entire lifecycle of either information governance or eDiscovery.  Please note that the major benefit of having an integrated solution is that it can support an agile itterative process as opposed to a waterfall approach that requires data to be moved from tool to tool.

Finally, in regards to the "big data" and culling issue, ESI will continue to increase at an accellerating rate and therefore Early Case Assessment (ECA) and culling will continue to be even more important.  And, directly to Wood's comment, I beleive that the enterprise and the CIO/CTO is going take the lead in regards to proactivly developing platforms that can provide the responsive information that is required for both information governance and eDiscovery.  And as such, outside counsel is going be religated back to being a law firm instead of an IT provider.

The full text of Evan article is as follows:

Early case assessment (ECA), predictive coding, and search/data review applications will dominate the e-discovery product announcements at this week's International Legal Technology Association trade show in Nashville, Tenn.
Wood's team interviewed dozens of corporate lawyers about e-discovery trends. "As the data shows: Most corporate counsel, even among heavy litigants with large law firm bills, still don't track e-discovery expenses closely," she wrote in an e-mail to Law Technology News. "And when asked what measures they were asking of their law firms, they're more likely to request an alternate fee arrangement than to get into the particulars of technology approaches and results-oriented tracking of productivity and accuracy -- although increasingly they're doing that as well."

Wood added: "This puts the onus on the law firms to compete with each other on price. Even if they throw bodies at the problem with contract reviewers and [outsourcing], it's not possible for them to review all the data in some cases under court timeframes. Technology has to improve, and law firms have to evolve."
Software vendors recognize this trend. Following are major e-discovery product announcements expected this week.

• CaseCentral will show version 5 of its e-discovery system with concept-based custom menus, visual and grid views, a process analytics dashboard, and a new file system connector.


• Daegis will announce version 7 of its hosted application. It now has a merged code base from Deagis' older DocHunter and Unify Central Archive applications, custodian-based archiving, more reporting options, a time estimator, and iterative search.

• Lateral Data is unveiling connections between its Viewpoint software and popular end user applications. The new connectors work with Facebook, Google Gmail, Google Docs, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Twitter, and Yahoo Mail.

• Orange Legal Technologies subsidiary PurpleBox system will announce an ECA appliance intended as a budget approach for enterprises.

• ZyLAB is debuting the Data Sampler quality control software with a wizard process. Detailed logs of each sampling process are saved for comparison to past and future uses.

ESG's Wood commented individually on the ECA and review trends.

For ECA, "Clearwell's had no lack of competition, and now that they're squarely under Symantec and being integrated more into enterprise sales, their rivals are likely to go for broke in the indirect channel with service providers to gain traction there," Wood stated. "Companies like LexisNexis and IPro who've had great success in the legal sector already in indirect sales, and AccessData in forensics, want the large deal sizes of the enterprise, and now have their own ECA tools to court them (or partner service providers until the enterprise license sales come)."

In general, "There's still a question of where the puck is headed as far as the 'too much data' problem in this market," she added. And there are questions without clear answers, she noted. "Will enterprise customers keep getting their hands dirty with pre-culling before handing their data off to the law firm, or will law firms adopt faster methods of review for more sustainable pricing? Or both?"

Labels: Cloud, Early Case Assessment, eDiscovery, ILTA

posted by Charles Skamser @ 11:47 AM 0 Comments

The Post Autonomy World

I was minding my own business yesterday when the rumors started to hit the wires that HP CEO Leo Apotheker was going to flush his mobile business, spin off or sell the PC business and bet the HP farm on information management by acquiring Autonomy. Since the Palm acquisition has been a flop and only 4 or 5 people have purchased the new HP tablet, it was no shock that Leo was announcing that he was getting out of a business that was basically already dead (please note that there is probably some value in the mobile IP but almost no value in the business). And, with dwindling margins in the PC business in the post PC era, it was also no shock that Leo decided to follow IBM and flush Compaq. However, I had to do a double take on his announcement that he was going to acquire Autonomy. My first thought was that this was a brilliant move.

Anyone that reads this blog and follows my Twitter account (eDiscoveryGroup) knows that I have been very vocal  that the new IT paradigm is information management/governance and eDiscovery in the cloud.  And, that the big IT providers that positioned themselves to quickly take advantage of this paradigm shift were going to be the big winners.   IBM has already made a move in this direction.  And, it was really interesting and made absolute sense to see that Leo was now going to follow. But then, the name Autonomy jumped right off the screen!  Wow, why Autonomy?

For those of us that have been in the information governance and eDiscovery market for any amount of time knows that Autonomy is the big gorilla on the block and that all of the rest of the vendors are second tier and lower.  They (Autonomy) have been building up their war chest of technology and clients for years and therefore tout the most terabytes of data stored, the largest client base, the most revenue and the list of most and biggest just goes on.

However, they also have what some would refer to as a  boat anchor called the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) which has created one of the most interesting love hate relationships in the IT industry.  It has historically been a leading edge solution, seems to work really well within the enterprise and therefore is one of the only options available for many within the global 1000 for massive information management.  However, most clients will tell you that its too expensive, cumbersome, hard to maintain and eats up resources.  Kinda reminds us all of Oracle!!

Autonomy has also not done a very good job of integrating all of the technologies that have purchased over the years and I am sure that it has made for some interesting discussions with clients in regards to how to migrate data back and forth between these technology platforms.  Probably made for some really good service and consulting contracts.

Next, although Autonomy has some interesting cloud based offerings and does in fact have lots of data being hosted and processed in the cloud, it is a bit of stretch to say that they are a leading edge cloud technology vendor.  And, although they also have some interesting search technology.  It is by no means leading edge.

Further, Autonomy has gained a reputation of over selling and committing and under delivering.  This has all added up to a very frustrated client base and a very wary list of prospects.  As a result, smaller vendors with less expensive and technically agile and focused solutions such as Nuix out of Australia have been able to eat away at Autonomy's market share (Huron Replaces Autonomy with Nuix).  And, there are several other players in the information governance and eDiscovery market that also have much better and more focused and agile platforms than Autonomy, including, CaseCentral, DigitalReef and StoredIQ (please note that I realize that I have not listed every single vendor that can successfully compete with Autonomy).  So, even with the HP acquisition, I would suspect that the trend of Autonomy losing installed base will continue.

As such, even though Leo in on the right track, he is going to have his hands full with the baggage that Autonomy brings with them.

However, all of this being said, I am not sure which technology provider that HP could have purchased, instead of Autonomy, that would have the "juice" to have an immediate and potentially long term impact on the success or failure of Leo, his strategy and ultimately HP.    And, it is very rewarding for all of us in the information governance and eDiscovery markets to have a respected CEO like Leo and a company like HP basically validate your market.

And, I have faith the Leo and his team is going to be able to eventually figure out what they have purchased, leverage the good stuff and flush the bad.  For the sake of the stockholder's and to a certain degree for the health of the IT industry in general, let's hope that he is successful.

Labels: Autonomy, Cloud, eDiscovery, HP, IBM, Informatoin Governance, Symantec

posted by Charles Skamser @ 11:17 AM 0 Comments