Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012

Over the past 12 months I have had the unique opportunity to seek out and review over 100 eDiscovery technologies.  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.

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.

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.

Following are my choices for the Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012:


BeyondRecognition, BeyondRecognition

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 BeyondRecognition and review his new glyph 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 impact on the eDiscovery market in the second half of 2012.

With character and word identification and conversion accuracy at 99.5%+, single instance character and word correction, Logical Document Determination (LDD), document type classification, duplication document detection, database 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: http://www.beyondrecognition.net/BeyondRecognition,_LLC/Overview.html.


X1 Social Discovery, X1 Discovery

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 X1 Social Discovery™ from X1 Discovery as one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012.

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™  provides for a powerful platform to collect, authenticate, search, review and produce electronically stored information (ESI) from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other web sources.  For more information about X1 Social Discovery™ , please visit: http://x1discovery.com/social_discovery.html.



X1 Rapid Discovery, X1 Discovery

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 X1 Rapid Discovery™ from X1 Discovery as one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012.

With X1 Rapid Discovery™, 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™  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™ , please visit:  http://x1discovery.com/rapid_discovery.html.


TunnelVision, Mindseye Solutions

The Early Case Assessment (ECA) tool landscape has changed dramatically over the past 12 months.  New tools that cover a larger percentage of the EDRM model and are built upon newer more flexible technologies have emerged with aggressive new pricing models. Therefore, I included TunnelVision from Mindseye Solutions, a representative of those new ECA platforms, as one of my top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012. 

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: http://www.mindseyesolutions.com/.


Equivio Zoom, Equivio

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 top five eDiscovery technologies to watch in 2012 and therefore I chose Equivio Zoom from Equivio.

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: http://www.equivio.com/.


Summary and Comments

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.

It will be interesting to review my list of Top 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.


Additional Product Reviews

Over the coming weeks, I will be posting additional product reviews for each of the technologies listed in the eDSG Top Five eDiscovery Technologies to Watch in 2012.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, Legal, Litigation, OCR, Optical Character Recognition, Social Media

posted by Charles Skamser @ 4:21 PM 0 Comments

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

Virtual eDiscovery Arrives

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.

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.

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. 

Current ECA Best Practices
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 “Virtualization is the Key to Future eDiscovery Software”.

X1RD Changes the ECA Paradigm
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.

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.

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. 

X1RD and the Amazon Cloud
As recently reported on the New York Times Bits Blog, in a post titled, “Amazon Creates a Software Rental Store”, 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, X1RD is the first virtual ECA platform listed in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) ISV catalog.

Although there are other ECA and Document Review platforms running in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud such as NextPoint, 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.

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.

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 “Amazon is Overlooking the Financial Value of eDiscovery”, 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.

Disruptive Pricing
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.

Final Observations and Comments
As indicated in “eDiscovery will follow the Cloud Computing Boom”, 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.

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).

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.

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.

Either way, the next few years are certainly going to be exciting times in the eDiscovery in the Cloud market.

Labels: Analytics, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, IBM, SAP

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:50 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

Amazon is Overlooking the Fiancial Value of eDiscovery

On April 4, 2012, Dick Harris posted a really interested article on Gigacom.com titled "How the cloud could boost Amazon’s slow-moving margins".  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.

The report estimates that AWS was responsible for $1.19 billion in revenue in 2011 (I predicted in October the business was on a billion-dollar run rate), of which $108 million (or about 9 percent) was sheer profit. It’s able to maintain this margin while constantly dropping prices on its cloud services, 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.

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 Its NoSQL DynamoDB database service, for example, is a service for which Amazon adds value (and cost) beyond just the delivery of cloud-based infrastructure, and there are lingering rumors of a big data analytics service that will provide higher-level services than AWS’s existing Elastic MapReduce offering. 

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 The Perfect Storm: eDiscovery and Cloud Service Providers, Cloud Computing Architecture and eDiscovery, eDiscovery Will Follow the Cloud Computing Boom and Navigating eDiscovery in the Cloud Shouldn't Be That Difficult.

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: Results of the 2012 eDSG Investigation of Cloud Service Providers and eDiscovery.

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.

The full text of the Gigacom article by Dick Harris is as follows:

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.

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.
The report estimates that AWS was responsible for $1.19 billion in revenue in 2011 (I predicted in October the business was on a billion-dollar run rate), of which $108 million (or about 9 percent) was sheer profit. It’s able to maintain this margin while constantly dropping prices on its cloud services, 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.

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.

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. Its NoSQL DynamoDB database service, for example, is a service for which Amazon adds value (and cost) beyond just the delivery of cloud-based infrastructure, and there are lingering rumors of a big data analytics service that will provide higher-level services than AWS’s existing Elastic MapReduce offering.
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, private-cloud pioneer startup Eucalyptus has licensed the AWS API, and Citrix wants to do the same for its CloudStack software. If it’s feeling greedy, Amazon could look to capitalize even further by charging others to integrate directly with its business.
Or it could just give that cost-plus dial about a quarter turn.

Labels: Amazon, AWS, Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Providers, CSPs, eDiscovery, Information Governance, Litigation

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:35 PM 0 Comments

Executive Interview with CEO of CloudNine Discovery

History of CloudNine

CloudNine Discovery is a Houston based software and services company that has been around for about nine years.  The company's flagship product is OnDemand®, 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.
"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.

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.

The Importance of SaaS Technology in eDiscovery

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.

"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."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.

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.

Monolithic vs. Best-in-class Technology

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.

"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.
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 multiple vendors.

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.

CloudNine in Five Year

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.

"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.

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).

Click Here to read the full text of Mr. Jenkin's interview on the eDiscovery Solutions website.For more information about CloudNine, please visit it's website at: http://www.cloudninediscovery.com/.

Labels: Cloud Computing, CloudNine, eDiscovery, Regional Litigation Service Providers, Saas, Software-as-a-Service

posted by Charles Skamser @ 2:36 PM 0 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

Cloud Computing is Maturing

With the dog days of summer 2011 upon us and the US debt ceiling negotiations in Washington DC seeming to be going nowhere, it is refreshing to be able to report that cloud computing is having a really great 2011 so far:

- The big IT providers are making progress building up their Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings.

- Our favorite players such as Apple and Microsoft are beginning to make their moves with offerings such as iCloud and Azure.

- The whole concept of multi-tenancy and virtualization is beginning to become part of the mainstream discussion (i.e. 18 months ago only us techies even knew what those terms meant).

- Although there were some security bumps early this year with Amazon and Sony, the market seems to be getting comfortable with the notion of a public cloud.

- The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers are beginning to close some big deals and therefore the previously radical idea of running a global 2000 enterprise in the cloud is no longer a “wild” idea.

- Global 2000 CFOs are ecstatic with the new economic realities of  cloud computing.

- Global 2000 CEOs are beginning to understand the strategic business benefits of cloud computing.

- The idea of Information Governance and eDiscovery in the cloud is beginning to take shape as some of the big IT providers are realizing that these components need to be a standard part of any IaaS/PaaS offering.

- Consolidation is enabling the market to begin to cull itself down to a more manageable number of players with the financial legs to provide the stability that the market is demanding.

So, the cloud computing market is maturing pretty much on schedule.  As such, the next five (5) years should be very exciting.  And,  as is the case with any new markets, there will be some big bumps along the way and maybe even some really unexpected turns.  However, under any circumstances, it will be fun to be able participate and watch.

In a blog posting by James Staten on the Forrester website on July 12, 2011 titled, “The Cloud Computing Market Grows Up”, Mr. Staten does an excellent  job listing the industry highlights and indicating that cloud computing is indeed growing up very nicely.

The full text of Mr. Staten’s Blog Posting is as follows:

Mark this date. While it isn't an anniversary of anything significant in the past, it is a day where our beloved cloud computing market showed significant signs of maturing. Major announcements by VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft all signaled significant progress in making cloud platforms (infrastructure-as-a-service [IaaS] and platform-as-a-service [PaaS]) more enterprise ready and consumable by I&O professionals.

* VMware updates its cloud stack. The server virtualization leader announced version 5 of its venerable hypervisor and version 1.5 of vCloud Director, its IaaS platform atop vSphere. Key enhancements to vCloud include more hardening of its security and resource allocation policy capabilities that address secure multitenancy concerns and elimination of the "noisy neighbor" problem, respectively. It also doubled the total capacity of VMs service providers can put in a single cloud to 20,000. VMware also resurrected a key feature from its now defunct Lab Manager — linked clones. This key capability for driving operational efficiency lets you deploy new VMs from the image library and the system will maintain the relationship between the golden image and the deployed VM. This does two things; it minimizes the storage footprint of the VM, much as similar technology does in virtual desktops, and second it uses the link to ensure clones maintain the patch level and integrity of the golden master. This alone is reason enough to consider vCloud Director.

To help both virtualization and cloud environments, VMware also made a significant change to its licensing model, moving away from CPU core entitlements (VMware will still count processor sockets, though) to pooled vRAM entitlements. This change ties licensing more to the use of the product and encourages greater VM consolidation as it counts VMs by size, rather than per physical server. This incents packing lots of VMs on a single system and even lets you share vRAM entitlements across physical systems to accommodate more seamless growth of your environment and management of the pool, a key operational change called out in our Virtualization Maturity Model. Basically, now you can entitle your virtual environment in total, based on its capacity, and fill it up as much as you want. This is much more consistent with their service provider pricing model; and if your goal is to build a private cloud, isn't that the point?

All in all, this shows that VMware gets it and is taking an active role in helping educate its customers that virtualization and cloud operations are two different things and making these distinctions clear is critical to their and your success. Well done, VMware.

* Citrix's acquisition of its OpenStack doppelganger, Cloud.com comes just months after Citrix announced its intention to commercialize an OpenStack solution for enterprises and service providers. Now they can stop that work. Cloud.com has successfully penetrated the service provider market with its OpenStack-based solution and racked up some solid wins in the enterprise to boot. This buy accelerates Citrix' IaaS efforts and gives solid financial backing to CloudStack. Sadly, though, it also reduces the number of commercial distributions of OpenStack by one.

Enterprise I&O pros should note that CloudStack is hypervisor agnostic, so this isn't a Xen-only play. And the synergies between CloudStack and the rest of its application and desktop virtualization portfolio aren't lost on the company or its service provider partners and prospects. Look to see more combined solutions that help you vend apps and desktops from a cloud in the future.

* Microsoft, here at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, stepped up its cloud game as well by showing the beta of System Center 2012, which adds a self-service portal for using Hyper-V as a private cloud platform and better orchestration for workload deployment. It also demonstrated new public cloud services from Boeing and General Mills plus a commissioned report by Forrester attesting to the differentiated economics of cloud platforms, something I talk about with CIOs in a report published this past spring.

For ISVs, Microsoft also announced commercial opportunities on Windows Azure for its massive software partner ecosystem. The Azure Marketplace can now vend commercial applications, meaning that any software application built for Windows (using the VMrole) or through Visual Studio (using the worker role) theoretically can be offered through Windows Azure as well.

Together, these announcements are strong milestones to the continuing progress and solid traction cloud platforms are having with the market. While the private cloud market is still very, very young, moves like these put it on more solid footing and should lead to expanded options for I&O professionals.

Labels: CEO, CFO, Cloud Computing, Compliance, eDiscovery, ESI, Forrester, Fujitsu, IBM, Information Governance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:50 PM 0 Comments

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) in Simple Terms

Martin Veitch, Editor in Chief of CIO Magazine interviews Fujitsu CIO and CTO

 

Labels: Cloud Computing, Fujitsu, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

posted by Charles Skamser @ 11:04 AM 0 Comments

Cloud Computing in Simple Terms

Following is a video that explains Cloud Computing in really simple terms.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Fujitsu

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:32 PM 0 Comments