2012 Early Case Assessment Buyer's Guide

This past week DCIG published the 2012 Early Case Assessment Buyer's Guide.  As the lead analyst on this guide, I will be posting my thoughts and comments about the development of the guide and the results over the next couple of weeks.

Please note that you can register for an August 9, 2012 Webinar where I will talk about how we developed the guide and will also demonstrate the online interactive version of the guide.  Click Here to register.

First of all, I wanted to thank Joshua Konkle from DCIG for inviting me to participate in the development of this guide.  Joshua and I spent hundreds of hours talking with Early Case Assessment (ECA) users to gather input to develop the survey questions and ranking criteria.  We then spend on told hours with the product managers from the vendors covered in the guide, processing the results and writing the report.  It was a very educational yet rewarding  exercise that I look forward to repeating it every12 months for years to come.

Beyond the ECA platform rankings, there is a lot of very valuable information in this guide in regards to the state of the eDiscovery market.  However, I can't comment on all of it at one time,.  Therefore, in this initial post, I will talk about some of the thought that went into developing the survey, the ranking criteria and release the list of the ECA tools in order of ranking.

Historically, technology industry reports have taken into consideration vendor size based on revenue and installed based and  other criteria that Joshua and I considered very subjective such as feedback from customers.   DCIG has historically attempted to be very objective in the development of its other buyers guides.  I like to call this the Dragnet approach as they have been steadfast to collect "just the facts".  As such, Joshua and I followed a similar philosophy  with the 2012 ECA Buyer's Guide.  We only wanted to collect verify and report on the facts of what these ECA tools could do and didn't take into consideration what customers thought or how much revenue the vendor generated.

In addition, DCIG has also historically taken a very bold approach of actually ranking the platforms in their guides as opposed to lumping them into conceptual categories that provide little to no value to perspective buyers. Joshua and I followed the same strategy with the 2012 ECA Buyer's Guide.  And, although we did place ECA platforms into categories such as Recommended, Excellent, Good and Basic, we did in fact rank the platforms from 1-29.  As a side not, the fact that we actually ranked the ECA tools provided for some interesting and frank discussions with many of the vendors that participated.  I plan to comment on some of these rankings in later posts.  However, as a teaser, potential buyers need to note that just because a particular ECA tool was ranked very low doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a perfect for your specific ECA requirements.  That's the beauty of the guide and more specifically the value of the Interactive Buyer's Guide (IBG) as it enables users to analyze all 29 ECA tools based on any of the 300 data point and choose those ECA tools that meet their specific criteria.  Please note that I will be talking about the IBG at length in future Blog posts and will also be demonstrating the IBG in multiple webinars over the next month.

Based on our personal experiences with ECA tools and view of where the ECA is going along with discussions with ECA users and a cross section of the ECA tool vendors, Joshua and I placed a heightened focus on ECA tools with the following features delivered as an integrated holistic platform:

• Data Mapping
• Analysis of enterprise ESI before collections
• Real-time collection of enterprise ESI
• Integration with enterprise archiving systems
• Ability to process social media ESI
• Legal Hold
• Workflow management
• Project management
• Next generation search
• First Pass Review
• Next generation user interface
• Information dashboard
• SaaS delivery option

Labels: DCIG, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, Joshua L. Konkle

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:28 PM 0 Comments

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

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

The Top 5 Most Requested Features for Early Case Assessment Platforms

The week of April 9, 2012, eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) ran a poll that asked voters to rank the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform.  Having spent the last 6 months analyzing ECA technology from the top ECA vendors in the world and talking to hundreds of end users in preparation for the release of the 2012 DCIG/eDSG Buyers Guide, the results of this survey were not overly surprising.  However, the results are very telling in regards to the paradigm shift that has occurred in how users view Early Case Assessment.  Therefore, I wanted to publish the details of the results of this poll.

Summary of Results
54% of the voters ranked Advanced Analytics as one of the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform. Support for Collection of Social Media and Collaboration came in second with 31%. Cost Calculations, Predictive Coding, Delivered as SaaS and Semantic Search came in third with 23%.

Following is an analysis and commentary for each of the categories:

Advanced Analytics
I was not surprised that 54% of the voters ranked Advanced Analytics as one of the top 5 most important features for an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform. After all, ECA is all about "analyzing" your potential pool of ESI to determine where it is located, what you have and how it will affect your case strategy.  However, I thik that there is a subtle hint hidden within this top ranking that may signal a change in way users view the process of eDiscovery . As a followup, it would be interesting to ask users to define "Advanced Analytics" and then identify where within the EDRM, they believe these analytics should be utilized.

Historically, the standard eDiscovery workflow followed the EDRM and therefore ESI that was potentially responsive or relevant was identified via standard file type, custodian and data parameters, collected or ingested, culled. analyzed and reviewed.  This analysis stage is what many within the industry now refer to as Early Case Assessment (ECA).  However, in 2012, there are technologies that allow for identification and analysis of ESI before it is even ingested.  Further, there is also now growing demand for the identification and analysis of live ESI residing in Content Management Systems (CMS), archiving systems, a wide variety of private and public email systems, public cloud storage and even public social media stores.  As a result of these changing requirements, I contend that the fundamental definition of Early Case Assessment (ECA) is evolving and therefore it may be time to adjust best practices, workflows and our expectations of ECA platforms should support.

Support for Collection of Social Media
I was also not surprised that 31% of the voters ranked Support for Collection of Social Media as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform. Corporate legal departments, corporate IT departments and outside counsel are beginning to realize the requirement to harvest potential evidence from social media sources such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and Google+ is real and therefore they want their ECA platform to be able to handle these file types.

Collaboration
31% of the voters ranked Collaboration as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  As the use of social media and SaaS based communication and collaboration applications has become more mainstream and therefore accessible to the enterprise knowledge worker, their expectations have risen accordingly. Therefore, it is not surprising that users expect their ECA platforms to follow the collaboration trend and support communications and collaboration for multiple different types of users from multiple different geographically regions.  Security is obviously an issue that the ECA vendors will have to address as the information that ECA platforms is more sensitive and can lead to sanctions and financial penalties.

Cost Calculations
23% of the voters ranked Cost Calculations as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  It has been well established that 70% of the cost of eDiscovery is in the cost of review and therefore there is a renewed emphasis on reducing the amount of ESI that eventually has to be reviewed.  With this requirement in mind, users have  been relying upon gathering the appropriate information such as amount of ESI by file type and custodian, etc. and plugging it into an Excel spreadsheet to forecast the eventual full cost of eDiscovery.  As such, I completely understand that users now want this capability added to the ECA platform.

Predictive Coding
I was very surprised that 23% of the voters ranked Predictive Coding as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  Predictive Coding currently normally resides as an alternative option to manual tagging and review within the Review section of the EDRM. So, I am not sure if these voters are confused or are truly contending (with their vote) that Predictive Coding technology needs to be pushed further to the left and utilized during the early stages of ESI identification, collection and analysis.

I predict that Predictive Coding or some form of Machine Driven Analysis will be incorporated into the early stages of ESI identification, collection and analysis drvien by the demands to increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs.  Pleaes note that eDSG in partnerhsip with DCIG will be releasing a Predictive Coding Buyers Guide this summer.  And, without giving away any vendor secrets I can state that the market is going to intriqued with the extent to which Predictive Coding or Machine Driven Analysis is going to be available to support the entire eDiscovery lifecycle.

Delivered as SaaS
23% of the voters ranked SaaS Delivery as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  As I have said many times, I believe that the "train has left the station" on SaaS based eDiscovery platforms.  The value proposition of operational efficiencies and costs savings are just too high for this train to turn around and therefore I was a bit surprised that Delivery as SaaS wasn't ranked higher.  I suspect that maybe users are now expecting this feature to a standard option of any ECA platform and therefore failed to vote for it.  Please note that I did not inlcude an option to vote for eDiscovery in the Cloud as that has become a very confusing and soon to be highly debated topic of disucssion.


First Pass Review
I was very surprised that only 15% of the voters ranked First Pass Review as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  As stated previously, it has been well established that 70% of the cost of eDiscovery is in the cost of review and therefore there is a renewed emphasis on reducing the amount of ESI that eventually has to be reviewed.  Therefore the concept of a First Pass Review (FPR) or a mini review done during ECA has become a well accepted practice before a final review set is defined and exported to a full blown review platform.

I predict that with the advancement of Predictive Coding techniques and other associated technologies that First Pass Review is going to expand and cannibalize a major percentage of the current Document Review platform market.  And, at some point in time, what we now define as Document Review will vanish as ESI will go directly from storage or real-time location to analysis and review and then directly into some digital form ready for the courtroom.  As evidence of this trend, it is interesting to note that we are now seeing many of the legacy ECA vendors expanding their FPR capabilities into full Document Review and many of the legacy Document Review vendors expanding their capabilities into ECA.

Workflow Management
I wasn't overly surprised that only 15% of the voters ranked Workflow Management as one fo the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  I believe that workflow management is an extremely important feature of any operational application. However, I think that the definition of the workflow within the eDiscovery lifecycle is in such a state of flux that it may be premature to try and define a workflow management system that vendors can be confident will be pertinent for more than just a few release cycles.  That being said, I believe that an ECA platform should provide solid workflow for First Pass Review and Predictive Coding and at least a user dashboard outlining the status of a "project" or "matter" as it makes its way from identification to collection to analysis to review to production.  In my opinion, the real answer is a flexible workflow management system that enables users to define their eDiscovery lifecycle. Whether this is accomplished through an integrated OEM solution or as a proprietary solution will be up to the individual vendors to decide.

Legal Hold
Only 8% of the voters ranked Legal Hold as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform because many beleive that it is outside the current definition of ECA and  they still don't know if they want to utilize a best-in-class or a holistic approach to support the entire eDiscovery workflow.

I predict that adding in real-time data mapping and coupling it with real-time legal hold that actually preserves ESI in a forensically sound manner is the direction that the market is going to take.  Whether this is accomplished through an integrated OEM solution or as a proprietary solution will be up to the individual vendors to decide.

Real-time Collections
8% of the voters ranked Real-time Collection as one of the top 5 most important features of an Early Case Assessment platform.  Given where eDiscovery has come from in the past 5 years, Real-time anything is a very aggressive position to take.  However, as the enterprise IT organizations become more involved in the eDiscovery process and eDiscovery becomes a subset of the Information Governance process, Real-time identification, analysis and collection will become an industry accepted best practice.

Summary
This poll was very telling in regards to how users are changing their views and associated requirements for what an Early Case Assessment (ECA) platform should support.  ECA is definitely moving further to the left in the eDiscovery lifecycle and it appears that users want the eDiscovery platform vendors to support this paradigm shift.

Click Here to review the results of all of the polls that eDSG has been running  on a weekly basis since June of 2011 on the current status of Information Governance and eDiscovery.  Click Here to vote in the most recent eDSG Weekly Poll.

Labels: Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, FPR, Frist Pass Review, Predictive Coding, Saas, Semantic Search

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:48 AM 0 Comments

Enterprise App Store in the Cloud

If you are using the iPhone, iPad or one of the Android portable devices,  you are already familiar with the concept of an "App Store".

The Apple App Store opened on July 10, 2008 via an update to iTunes. On July 11, the iPhone 3G was launched and came pre-loaded with iOS 2.0.1 with App Store support; new iOS 2.0.1 firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch was also made available via iTunes. As of June 6, 2011, there are at least 425,000 third-party apps officially available on the App Store. As of January 18, 2011, the App Store had over 9.9 billion downloads and at 10:26 AM GMT on Saturday, January 22, 2011, the 10 billionth app was downloaded from Apple App Store. As of late 2011, 200 million iOS users have downloaded over 18 billion apps from its App Store.

And although the Android platform is a relative new commer to the App market, it now boasts 400,000 Apps with over 10 billion downloads.

So, the paradigm shift has occurred.  Mobile devices users (which before too many more years will make up the majority of computer users) now expect to be able to search for an App in the cloud and then download it to their device, pay for it with a credit card and start using it immediately. It is just the way "things" are suppose to work. So, why aren't we doing this in the enterprise software market?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the closest thing to the App Store model in the enterprise market. SaaS, sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally, typically with a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or directly from the software vendor, and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.

SaaS has become a common delivery model for most business applications, including accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), content management (CM) and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of all leading enterprise software companies.  Please note that the term software as a service (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing, along with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which is the topic of my next Blog post.
According to a Gartner Group estimate, SaaS sales in 2010 reached $10B, and were projected to increase to $12.1b in 2011, up 20.7% from 2010. Gartner Group estimates that SaaS revenue will be more than double its 2010 numbers by 2015 and reach a projected $21.3b. Customer relationship management (CRM) continues to be the largest market for SaaS. SaaS revenue within the CRM market was forecast to reach $3.8b in 2011, up from $3.2b in 2010.So, where is the Enterprise App Store that houses and enables users to download Enterprise Class SaaS Apps?

The Enterprise App Store
The Enterprise App Store doesn't really exist, to any great degree, because the infrastructure and business model is much more complicated in the enterprise market than it is in the consumer market.  And, due to the quarter over quarter financial pressues, the legacy software vendors are "dragging their feet" on moving to this model as it will completely change their revenue models and the transition could prove to  be a short term disaster for profits and stock prices.  In the long run, an Enterprise App Store delivery model should generate more revenues with dramatically higher margins.

Nevertheless, Amazon and several of the other Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are beginning to offer application catalogues that resemble the Apple and Android App Stores.  And, there are rumors that several of the Auzre cloud platform providers are also developing the infrastructure and backoffice administration to support an Enterprise Class App Store in the Cloud.

Where it Runs
One of the major differences between downloading a single application to an iPhone and downloading an enterprise class application for use throughout an organization is where and how it runs.  Obviously, the iPhone app runs on a single iPhone.  However, the enterprise app will more than likely have to run in a virtual environment on a server and will have to provide access to multiple users.    This is a much different configuration and will require a much more robust infrastructure.

Pricing
Another major difference is pricing.  Many iPhone and Android apps are free and very few cost more than a few dollars.  In addition, users can download them and pay for them, as an example, with the credit card they have on file with iTunes. Enterprise apps on the other hand may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and won't be paid for via a credit card.  Once again, the infrastructure and backoffice administrative systems to support this new model are much different.

Further, thanks to $.48 per hour per server pricing from CSPs like Amazon, use pricing is also another variable that enterprise App users will begin to demand.  Instead of paying $250.000 per year for an SMB enterprise ERP system, users may want to pay $100 per hour per instance or per user for the time that they are actually using the App.  And, once again, the infrastructure and backoffice administrative systems to support these requirements are much different than anything that has been done in the past.

The New Enterprise App Paradigm in the Cloud
The new Enterprise App paradigm in the cloud will enable enterprise users to access the cloud (where all of their data now resides) from any computing device (more likely a mobile devices as time marches on) and choose which Apps they want to use.  The system (more than likely supported by a major CSP) will pull an instance of the requested App out of an App library, configure it to support the needs of the user and then charge the user's enterprise for the time that the App is actually used.  This may sound crazy.  But, this paradigm is not that far away.  And, once one of the major CSPs begins to offer this as a first mover, the market will explode and the rest of the CSPs will have to follow or perish (i.e. how viable would a smart phone be that didn't enable you to download applicaions?).

Targets of Opportunity
The target markets for an Enterprise App Store are wide spread with both operational and financial benefits for both large and small enterprises.  However, there are a few vertical application domains with applications that are not used on a daily basis that appear to pose great initial targets of opportunity.  An example of this type of App would be within the eDiscovery market wtih Early Case Assessment (ECA) platforms.  Enterprises that may be reluctant to spend $250,000 per year for a ECA tool under the current legacy distribution model where the amount of usage is highly variable,  might be keen to enter into an agreement to have access to a virtual ECA solution with a pricing schedule that only charges them when they use the system.   I am not sure that the legacy ECA tool vendors are going to be pleased with this new paradigm (See above).  But, its the direction that the market is headed and therefore they had better start to make adjustments in their delivery models and also had better prepare their stockholders for the changes in the revenue stream.

SummaryIt only took comsumers a fews years to embrace the iPhone and Android App Store model and download almost 30 billion applications from the cloud.  As I always say, the train has left the station on how users want their apps served up.  So, now its just a matter of how long it takes the enterprise software vendors and the Cloud Service Providers to get their collective acts together and offer the same delivery paradigm for enterprise Apps.

Labels: Android, App Store, Apple, Cloud Service Provider, CSP, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, iPad, iPhone, iTouch, iTunes

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:16 PM 0 Comments

Information Governance and eDiscovery Trends for 2012

2011 has been a transitionary year for information governance and eDiscovery.  Enterprises and governments worldwide have had to come to grips with the sudden acceleration of the use of social media, cloud computing, mobile devices and the resulting explosion in the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

Some are predicting the end of email in favor ot texting, Twitter and other social media electronic communications.  There are over 100 million users on Twitter each day with 35% utilizing a mobile device.  Facebook now has over 800 million users with 74% outside the United States and 350 million on mobile devices.  There are also over 100 million LinkedIn users worldwide as business social media and the assocication collaboration and communications is now required as a fundamental marketing tool for any serious business player.  Click Here for a more detailed graphic overview of the the growth of social media from the Search Engine Journal.

In addition to social meida, the fundamental infrastructure matured in 2011 to support more serious cloud computing.  Enterprises worldwide began to realize the dramatic cost benefits and potential business benefits of cloud computing.  As a result they gave serious consideration to private cloud implementations and are becoming more comfortable with moving some ESI to public Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as Amazon and Rackspace.  Microsoft launched Office360 to enable users to access the Microsoft Office Suite of products as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) removing the expensive and time consuming software update dance that we all dread.  And, late in 2010, Apple released the iCloud platform for consumer cloud storage and set the stage for literally millions of iPhone, iTouch and Mac users to begin storing their pictures and other personal data in the cloud.

For anyone involved in the world of Information Technology (IT) whether as a user or a technologist, 2011 was definitely an exciting year.  For those of us in the information governance and eDiscovery business, 2011 marked a turning point, both literally and conceptually, for the monitoring, indentification, collection, processing, review and production of electronic evidence.

Is it no longer just an interesting discussion at the local pub to talk about the eventuality of social media as a source of evidence.  There were already close to 1,000 cases in 2011 where the judge issued a written opinion that mentioned social media. Likewise, information governance and eDiscovery in the cloud is longer just an interesting breakout session at tradehows to fill up your 'dance card".  Harvesting ESI from the cloud for the purpose of eDiscovery was a real issue in 2011 and therefore anyone that is serious about eDiscovery from a process, legal and technology standpoint, had better start to pay attention.

Given all of this (and more that I have not even mentioned), 2012 is going to be a banner year for changes in information governance and eDiscovery.  Following are my predictions:

Information Governance and eDiscovery Will Move to the Cloud
As more and more ESI moves to the cloud, the requirement to harvest this ESI "from the cloud" will also continue to grow.  However, there will be a tremendous amount of confusion in regards to exactly what information governance and eDiscovery in the cloud means.  Most, if not all, of the seroius technology vendors will announce that they are cloud ready or work in the cloud.  However, in most cases, this will mean that they are using the same old legacy technology and harvesting data "from the cloud" and processing it the same old way they have been processing ESI and paper for years.  Some of these vendors will have their own data centers and offer up information governance and eDiscovery as as Service.   However, this is nothing new.  The real change that we will witness in 2012 will be virtual technology (not hardware based) that enables users to move information governance and eDiscovery solutions/platforms to the cloud ESI and collects it and processes it in the cloud where it resides.  Physical location will no longer be an issue.  Collection and moving massive amounts of data will no longer be an issue.  The salability of hardward solutions will no longer be an issue.  Staging information governance and eDiscovery respositories in third party service provider data centers will no longer be required.

Enterprises will be able to move virtual information governance and eDiscovery solutions around their networks and private clouds as required to collect and process ESI where it resides. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) will provide information governance and eDiscovery solutions as part of their standard IaaS and PaaS technology stacks.   Early Case Assessment (ECA) is going to take on a whole new meaning.  This approach is a major paradigm shift in the entire concept of how information governance and eDiscovery should work.  2012 is going to be an exciting year for information governance and eDiscovery in the cloud.

Semantic Search will Go Mainstream
The mystical world of semantic search and natural language processing technology will finally go mainstream in 2012.  New Information governance and eDiscovery technology vendors will emerge that are utilizing this technology as the foundation of their offerings or have seamlessly integrated this technology into their platforms.  Litigators will begin to understand the value of semantic search, courts will begin to accept the results and users will begin to demand its use.  Before the end of 2012, the industry may even recognize the term "Lucene".

Predictive Coding will Go Mainstream
Just like the mystical world of semantic search and natural language processing technology, Predictive Coding will also go mainstream in 2012.  New Information governance and eDiscovery technology vendors will emerge that have seamless integrated this technology into their platforms.  Litigators will begin to understand the value of Predictive Coding, courts will begin to accept the results and users will begin to demand its use.  Offshore coding will become less attractive as Predictive Coding will enable all but the very detailed review and tagging to be done automatically.

Informationn Governance and eDiscovery for Social Media Will be Required
Pushed by the ethical requirements for litigators to understand and utilize eDiscovery for social media and the practical requirements to ensure that all pertinent ESI is being collected and submitted, there will be a  major move by the courts and litigators in 2012 to ensure that social media evidence is being collected and submitted with an appropriate chain of custody and with access to metadata to ensure the validity of the evidence.  And, as a results, legacy ECA vendors will social media file types to their bag of tricks and numerous new Discovery tools for social media will be released in 2012.

End-to-End Information Governance and eDiscovery Solutions
As Early Case Assessemnt (ECA) vendors expand their product lines "right" into document review and case management and as document review platform expand their product lines "left" into ECA, the market is going to have a choice of more end-to-end information governance and eDiscovery solutions.  In addition, we will see the integration of data mapping, legal hold, semantic search, predictive coding, project management, workflow management and case management into these end-to-end solutions.

Litigator Will Become More Technology Savy
Out of both practical necessity and statute ordered requirements, litigators will become more technology savvy in 2012.  The days of the hands-off, don't bother me with the technical details for eDiscovery litigator are quickly coming to a close. 

Information Governance and eDiscovery Pricing will Drop
The move to the cloud along with easily scalable virtual solutions offered up as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will enable a dramatic price decrease for information governance and eDiscovery in 2012.

eDiscovery will become a subset of Information Governance
As I have predicted in previous years, as eDiscovery moves to the enterprise, eDiscovery will become a subset of Information Governance in 2012.


In conclusion, 2012 is going to be a very exciting year in information governance and eDiscovery.  Enjoy the rest of 2011 and strap yourself in for a wild ride in 2012.



 

Labels: 2012 Trends, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, FRCP, Legal, Legal Hold, Litigation, Predictive Coding, Project Management, Semantic Search, Worlflow Management

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:02 AM 0 Comments

Evolving from eDiscovery to Information Governance

Gartner announced their inaugural “magic quadrant” for the E-Discovery (eDiscovery) software market on May 13, 2011 and predicted that this market would reach $1.5 Billion in revenue by 2013.    However, as anyone that reads my blog posts on a regular basis knows, I believe that eDiscovery is actually part of a larger market called information governance (IG).  And, as Sunil Soares, the Director of Information Governance within the IBM Software Group indicated in a blog post on April 11, 2011 titled, Why Information Governance is a Market, Not Just a Process, “information governance is like the blind man and the elephant. Depending on which part of the elephant you touch, people define information governance to include master data management, data stewardship, data quality management, metadata management, business glossaries, information lifecycle management and security and privacy.” 

I would actually include several other components as integral parts of IG in pursuit of my premise that if Gartner predicts that the eDiscovery market is going to reach $1.5 Billion by 2013, the information governance market is going to be many times this size.  Or, in other words, more than likely the largest  software and services market on the planet in the next five (5) years (Note that HP paid $11 Billion for Autonomy to play in the IG Market).

As such, if IG is going to be such a large market, and if (as I contend) many eDiscovery platforms already possess some of the capabilities to support the much larger IG requirements, it stands to reason that many of the current eDiscovery platform vendors are going to make an attempt to evolve into IG vendors.  As such, the topic of my blog today is an overview of  that potential evolution.

There are several challenges that face the current set of eDiscovery platform vendors in their quest to become bona fide members of the IG vendor community, including; (1) technology, (2) sales capabilities; (3) marketing; and, (4) partnerships and the channel.  My opinion on each of these challenges is as follows:

THE TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE

The natural evolution of any market will present different technology challenges at different stages in that lifecycle.   And, it is also not unusual as technology vendors enhance and/or upgrade their platforms to meet these evolving challenges that they find that they have inadvertently developed the capability to potentially meet the challenges in additional markets.   Such is the case with the eDiscovery market as it evolves to the point where it’s requirements are fundamentally very similar to the requirements of IG.  And, therefore, as would be natural, there are several eDiscovery platform vendors that have developed technology that would be able to support some of the fundemental requirements of IG.

The fundamental requirements of eDiscovery: The fundamental requirements for an eDiscovery platform are to: (1) collect data, (2) process/normalize data, (3) index data, (4) analytics and reporting, (5) search and associated tagging, (6)  first pass review, (7) support for standard export formats, (8) comprehensive document review; and, (9) production.  Additional potential requirements include; (1) data mapping; (2) integrated legal hold, (3) data retention policy management, (4) workflow management , (5) Advanced analytics such as predictive coding and related machine driven intelligence, (6) collaboration, (7) federated data stores; and, (8) big data.

In my opinion, there are currently no eDiscovery platforms on the market that fulfill all of these requirements in a comprehensive and commercially viable way.   Therefore, users currently utilize a best-in-class approach to cover the entire lifecycle.  However, that being said, there are several eDiscovery platform vendors that have made great strides towards fulfilling the requirements of the entire lifecycle and should be able to do so within  the next few releases (i.e. 6-12 months).   The question for this blogger, which of these eDiscovery requirements and by extension, which eDiscovery platform vendors, will be able to cross over to support IG.

The fundamental requirements of information governance: as Sunil Soares, the Director of Information Governance within the IBM Software Group indicated, “information governance is like the blind man and the elephant. Depending on which part of the elephant you touch, people define information governance… differently.”  As such, depending upon which “blind man” you talk to, information governance  can be many different things.

As a place to start, Debra Logan of Gartner fame defined IG in a blog posting on January 11, 2010, titled, “What is Information Governance? And Why is it So Hard?, as “the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.  It is derived from our definition of IT governance which ‘may be defined as the processes that ensure effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.” 

Debra’s definition is definitely a mouth full.  However, it is actually a very good definition from a conceptual standpoint.  What it doesn’t do is explain the fundamental and specific requirements of an IG platform.  So, in pursuit of attempting to investigate whether or not an eDiscovery platform could be used to support information governance, my list of fundamental requirements for an information governance platform are: (1) data mapping, (2) data usage policy management, (3) data retention policy management, (3) storage management, (4) collection, (5) indexing, (6) analytics and reporting, (7) information security and risk management, (8) compliance management, (9) fraud management, (10), data federation, (11) workflow, (12) advanced analytics such as machine driven search and analysis, (12) document review, (13) collaboration, (14) big data; and, (15) production.
So, with the exception of data usage policy, storage management and security and fraud management, there is not really much of a difference between the fundamental requirements of IG and eDiscovery.    And, at some level, it would be appropriate to conclude that eDiscovery requirements are actually a subset of the requirements of IG.

Conclusion on technology: Therefore, without getting into a long and drawn out discussion about focus, release creep, support and other application development and support issues, I am going to conclude that there are in fact some eDiscovery platform vendors that have platforms or are close to having platforms that could provide support for at least part of the IG lifecycle.

THE SALES CHALLENGE

It is a natural evolution of any market lifecycle to have different sales requirements at different stages in that lifecycle.  And, the litigation technology and services market is no exception.  What started out  as a market requiring vendors to sell copying, scanning and coding to law firms has quickly evolved into a market requiring a comprehensive eDiscovery platform for global 2000 legal department and possibly even the IT department.

This dramatic change is evident in the eDiscovery offerings moving from services to a combination of services technology, in the type and length of the sale cycle, in pricing and in the buyer.  As a result, this paradigm shift has has a dramatic affect on the type of sales professional that can be successful with these market dynamics.

The litigation Services Sales Executive: Most of the current eDiscovery tool vendors have sales organizations stocked with sales personnel that “cut their sales teeth” in the litigation services industry.   This sales executives understand how to process and code paper documents, and extract Electronically Stored Information (ESI) from tape.  They know the dynamics of copying, scanning, coding, document review and even online document review and associated storage and can quote the economics in their sleep.   Swimming in what  quickly became a commodity based market, these sales executives established relationships within the lower levels of the litigation services groups of law firms years ago and have made a living from leveraging these relationships.

However, as the litigation technology market evolved from scanning to  online document review to Early Case Assessment (ECA), the stakeholders within the law firms began to change and as a result these early litigation services sales executives had to “move up the buyer food chain” and establish relationships with new and more sophisticated buyer sand learn to work through a more complex and technically centric sales cycle.  They were still selling to the law firms, but they were now having to explain technology stacks, support for data types and databases and connectivity options (i.e. LAN, WAN or the Internet).   Selling also began to move from a relationship based model to more of a customer centric and/or solution selling model based on a combination of technology, services and support.

The Computer Forensic Tools Salesman: Another group of sales executives grew up in the computer forensics and data collection industry selling technology and the associated services to extract Electronically Stored Information (ESI) from computers and “downstream it” to the service providers and/or law firms to integrate into a larger dataset of scanned data.    This group of sales executives are actually fairly technical as they understand the details of where and how ESI is stored and the complexities of extracting it in what has become to be known as a “forensically sound manner”.   They also understand the concepts of metadata and probably understand the technology (as opposed to just the concepts) of de-duping, de-nisting and flattening out and unpacking ESI.  Swimming in the strange waters of computer forensics, these sales executives learned to sell to the very niche market of law enforcement, private investigators and the really technical nerds sitting in the basements of law firms and corporate legal and/or IT departments (for those of you who watch the TV series Bones,  the FBI refers to this group of practitioners as squints). 

Over time and with the consolidation of technology vendors, many of the independent technologies that were were initially sold as computer forensic tools have now been  integrated into larger Early Case Assessment (ECA) or entire eDiscovery lifecycle tools.  And, this consolidation will accelerate as the eDiscovery market moves to the cloud.

The new sales cycle: Historically, the litigation tools and service sales cycle was reactive and project based and therefore had short sales cycles with a buyer that a had a very easy to identify pain (e.g. he/she had a bunch of paper that needed to be processed).   Even as eDiscovery technology became a more significant part of the sale (e.g. online document review and ECA platforms), because many of the eDiscovery platform vendors were providing a package of technology and services, the sales cycle was still primarily reactive and project based.  And, although selling into the litigation service provider channel did have more of a standard technology sales cycle, most of the eDiscovery platform vendors still wanted in on the project revenue and therefore priced their offering with an annual license fee plus a per gigabyte processing fee component that put their sales teams back in the project hunt.  I guess that it is hard for a zebra to change its strips?

However, as the eDiscovery platform vendors began to target the eDiscovery buyers within the global 2000 legal departments, the sales cycle has changed to more of a standard technology sales cycle.  And, as these same eDiscovery platform vendors and their sales organizations attempt to sell information governance to the business and IT stakeholders within the global 2000, they are going to find themselves right in the middle of a standard technology sales cycle very similar to the sales cycle for selling ERP or other multi-million dollar software and services.

Conclusion on sales challenges:  I am going to conclude that the eDiscovery platform vendors are going to have to retool their sales and channel organizations to effectively sell IG into the global 2000.

POSITIONING AND MARKETING CHALLENGE

Positioning, messaging, marketing and the resulting “perception” in the market, in most cases, is more important to the success of a technology offering than the actual technology itself.   The technology “junk yard” is littered with leading edge technologies that failed because they did not create an adequate perception in the market.  And, on the flip side of this argument, there have been many very successful technology companies that have has spectacular marketing and less than spectacular technology.   In fact there are actually a couple of these success stories that have occurred in the the eDiscovery market.

The current state of marketing within the eDiscovery platform vendors: That being said, many of the current eDiscovery platform vendors have revenues less than $25M per year and therefore have realistic economic limitation on what they can spend on positioning and marketing their products.   Further, I am going to contend that, given the rapid changes in the litigation technology market, that the eDiscovery platform vendors  are already challenged with developing and delivering a focused message that makes sense to law firms, service providers, consulting groups and the legal departments within corporations. In most cases, what the market sees from the eDiscovery platform vendors is a combination of independent positioning and market for each market with little or nor coordination and integration across the disparate markets segments.

The positioning and marketing requirements of IG:  Although the technologies between eDiscovery and IG are similar, the IG market is completely different from the eDiscovery market.  The corporate buyer is a much different animal than the eDiscovery vendor marketing teams have ever seen. The value propositions and Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) arguments are much more business oriented.  There are probably multiple stakeholders within different groups or divisions with different agendas. There are corporate gatekeepers.  The sales cycles will be long and complicated and require patience and big IT sales expertise.   Given all of this, positioning and marketing are going to be paramount for the eDiscovery platform vendors to even get invited to the IG party.

Further, as with any new market, the IG market “waters are fairly bloody” as the vendors and buyers try to figure out what they are doing.  Finally, there are some very large sharks with really big marketing budgets like HP, IBM and Oracle that play in these waters. All told, it is definitely not a place for the inexperienced, uninformed, confused or unaware to be swimming.

Conclusion on positioning and marketing challenges:  I am going to conclude that the eDiscovery platform vendors will face a major challenge to develop and deliver a coherent and effect IG marketing message to the global 2000.

PARTNERSHIPS AND THE CHANNEL

Partnerships and channels have become one of the major distribution and support vehicles for many of the big IT providers throughout the world.  Direct sales organizations are expensive and it is very difficult to develop and maintain expertise in every one of the vertical markets that and IT provider may want to play.    As an example, Cisco just announced that, “it will put its money where its mouth is and invest $75 million in new resources for the channel during its fiscal 2012.”

Partnerships and the channel in the eDiscovery market: The eDiscovery market has been no exception when it comes to partnership and channels.  Most of the eDiscovery platform vendors have developed partnerships and associated channels of distribution with the litigation service providers and consulting organizations.

In addition, most of the eDiscovery platform vendors have established OEM type partnerships with each other, filling in technology short comings in their product lines and in pursuit of developing comprehensive support for the entire eDiscovery lifecycle.

Partnership and channel requirements in the IG market:   As indicated throughout this blog post, the IG market is big and is already occupied by some of the largest IT players in the world.  As such, major partnerships and channels of distribution have already been established among some of the bigger players.   The big storage vendors are aligning with the big IT players and the big consulting players are aligning with the big IG providers.

Conclusion on partnership and channel challenges: I am going to conclude that many of the current partnerships and channels of distribution that the eDiscovery platform vendors have developed are not going to be of much use in the IG market as these partners do not have relationships with the IG buyers and are not even currently selling into the global 2000 IG market.

SUMMARY

I believe that there are currently several eDiscovery platform vendors that have platforms or are close to having platforms that could provide support for at least part of the IG lifecycle.  However, I have concluded that these eDiscovery platform vendors are going to have to retool their sales and channel organizations to effectively sell IG into the global 2000. Further, I have concluded that these eDiscovery platform vendors will face a major challenge to develop and deliver a coherent and effect IG marketing message to the global 2000 and many of the current partnerships and channels of distribution that the eDiscovery platform vendors have developed are not going to be of much use in the IG market as these partners do not have relationships with the IG buyers and are not even currently selling into the global 2000 IG market.

In conclusion, having said all of that, I firmly predict that several of the current eDiscovery platform vendors will rise up to meet these challenges and become major players in the IG market within the next five (5) years. As a result, some of them will be acquired along the way and other will remain independent.  The rest of the eDiscovery platform vendors will continue to successfully ride the wave of project based eDiscovery and associated services for many years to come.  After all, not every organization in the world is going to jump on the IG bandwagon.

Labels: Autonomy, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, HP, IBM, Information Goverance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:28 AM 0 Comments

eDiscovery and Big Data Analytics

If cloud computing in general is the next challenge facing information governance and eDiscovery.  Then, Big Data Analytics is one of the specific issues that information governance and eDiscovery technologist are going to have to conquer.

Cloud computing is an IT infrastructure choice, storage architecture and application delivery mechanism.  And, combined with mobile computing, a choice that will results in more Electronically Stored Information (ESI) or Electronically Stored Evidence (ESE), if you are a lawyer, than the total information from all previous generations.

And, whereas the eDiscovery industry has been struggling to collect, process and analyze terabytes of data in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable cost, this new paradigm of cloud computing and its associated federated data stores is already producing peta and exabytes of data.  Hence, the term Big Data (its actually all a matter of perspective).  Of even more concern is the fact that as the eDiscovery market has been struggling to appropriately and accurately analyze structured data, the new paradigm of Big Data in the cloud is largely unstructured data and therefore largely left out of the eDiscovery equation.

Today, whether right or wrong and due largely to a lack of understanding and associated technological and financial restraints, very little unstructured data is even considered during 26(f) strategies and is therefore left out of most litigation. From an eDiscovery standpoint, there is no doubt that there are "smoking guns" hiding in some Big Data store as unstructured data and as such brings a whole new meaning to the phrase of "looking for a needle in a haystack".

However, I believe that there is hope as Big Data analytics do in fact exist and the technology is evolving. As Srinivasan Sundara Rajan from HP points out in September 6, 2011 article on SOA World Magazine Site titled, "Traditional vs Big Data Analytics," "Big data analytics provide new ways for businesses and government to analyze unstructured data which so far have been rejected by the data cleansing routines in a typical enterprise data warehouse scenario."  This same technology will be useful for information governance and eDiscovery.  And, from a requirements standpoint,  may prove to be a very interesting and financially rewarding vertical for the technologists to address.

The full text of the Srinivasan Sundara Rajan's article is as follows:

Big Data Analytics Convergence Among the Major IT Companies
Major IT companies acquiring analytics software and application providers has been the order of the day. We have seen the words ‘Big Data Analytics' being used in many solutions for the enterprise.
‘Big Data' is the general term used to represent massive amounts of unstructured data that are not traditionally stored in a Relational form in enterprise databases. The following are the general characteristics of Big Data.

• Data storage defined in order of PETA BYTES, EXA BYTES and much higher in volume to the current storage limits in enterprises which TERA BYTES.
• Generally it is considered as Unstructured data and not really falling the under the relational database design which the enterprises have been used to
• Data Generated using unconventional methods outside of data entry like, RFID, Sensor networks etc...
• Data is time sensitive and consists of data collected with relevance to the time zones

In the past, the term ‘Analytics' has been used in the business intelligence world to provide tools and intelligence to gain insight into the data through fast, consistent, interactive access to a wide variety of possible views of information.

Very close to the concept of analytics, data mining has been used in enterprises to keep pace with the critical monitoring and analysis of mountains of data. The biggest challenge is how to unearth all the hidden information through the vast amount of data.

Traditional DW Analytics vs Big Data Analytics
The analytics of enterprise data toward meaningful insights into the information that exists over a period of
time in that context is why Big Data Analytics makes it different from traditional data warehouse analytics.

Traditional Data warehouse Analytics	Big Data Analytics
Traditional Analytics  analyzes on the known data terrain that too the data   that is well understood.  Most of the data warehouses have a elaborate ETL processes and database constraints, which means the data that is loaded inside a data warehouse is well under stood, cleansed and in line with the business metadata.	The biggest advantages of the Big Data  is it is targeted at unstructured data outside of traditional means of capturing the data. Which means there is no guarantee that the incoming data is well formed and clean and  devoid of any errors.  This makes it more challenging but at the same time it gives a   scope for much more insight into the data.
Traditional Analytics is built on top of the relational data model,  relationships between the subjects of interests have been created  inside the system and the  analysis is done based on them.	In typical world, it is very difficult to establish  relationship between all the information in a formal way, and  hence unstructured data in the form  images, videos, Mobile generated information, RFID etc... have to be considered in big data analytics. Most of the big data analytics database are based out  Columnar databases.
Traditional  analytics is batch oriented  and  we need to wait for nightly ETL and transformation jobs to complete before the required insight is obtained.	Big Data Analytics is aimed at  near real time analysis of the data using the  support of the software meant for it
Parallelism in  a traditional analytics system is achieved  through  costly hardware like MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) systems   and / or  SMP systems.	While there are appliances in the market for the Big Data Analytics,  this can also be achieved  through commodity hardware and new generation of analytical software like Hadoop or other Analytical databases.

Traditional Data warehouse Analytics	Big Data Analytics
Traditional Analytics  analyzes on the known data terrain that too the data   that is well understood.  Most of the data warehouses have a elaborate ETL processes and database constraints, which means the data that is loaded inside a data warehouse is well under stood, cleansed and in line with the business metadata.	The biggest advantages of the Big Data  is it is targeted at unstructured data outside of traditional means of capturing the data. Which means there is no guarantee that the incoming data is well formed and clean and  devoid of any errors.  This makes it more challenging but at the same time it gives a   scope for much more insight into the data.
Traditional Analytics is built on top of the relational data model,  relationships between the subjects of interests have been created  inside the system and the  analysis is done based on them.	In typical world, it is very difficult to establish  relationship between all the information in a formal way, and  hence unstructured data in the form  images, videos, Mobile generated information, RFID etc... have to be considered in big data analytics. Most of the big data analytics database are based out  Columnar databases.
Traditional  analytics is batch oriented  and  we need to wait for nightly ETL and transformation jobs to complete before the required insight is obtained.	Big Data Analytics is aimed at  near real time analysis of the data using the  support of the software meant for it
Parallelism in  a traditional analytics system is achieved  through  costly hardware like MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) systems   and / or  SMP systems.	While there are appliances in the market for the Big Data Analytics,  this can also be achieved  through commodity hardware and new generation of analytical software like Hadoop or other Analytical databases.

Use Cases for Big Data Analytics
Enterprises can understand the value of Big Data Analytics based on the use cases and how the traditional problems can be solved with the help of Big Data Analytics. The following are some of the usages.

Customer Satisfaction and Warranty Analysis: Probably this is the one big area that most product-based enterprises are worried about. As of today, there is not a clear way of gauging the issues with the products and the associated customer satisfaction, unless they come in a formal way in an electronic form.

• Information regarding quality is collected through various external channels and most of the times the data is not clean
• As the data is unstructured there is no way to relate the associated issues, so that the long-term fix can be given to customer.
• Classification and grouping of problem statements are missing , resulting enterprises not able to group the issues

From the above discussion, utilizing the Big Data Analytics for customer satisfaction and Warranty analysis will help enterprises gain insight into the much-needed customer mind set and solve their problems effectively and to avoid them in their new product lines.

Competitor Market Penetration Analysis: In today's economy where the competition is high, we need to gauge the areas where the competitors are strong and their pain points through an analysis within the legal means. This information is available in a variety of web sites, social media sites and other public domains. Big data analytics on this data can provide an organization with much needed information about Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats for their product lines.

Healthcare / Epidemic Research & Control: Epidemics and seasonal diseases like influenza start with certain patterns among the people and they spread to a larger section if they are not detected early and controlled. This is one of the biggest challenges for growing as well as developed nations. The current issue most of the times the symptoms vary between the people and various health care providers treat them differently. There is also not a common classification of symptoms across people. Adopting Big Data Analytics on this typically unstructured data will help the local governments to effectively tackle the outbreak situations.

Product Feature and Usage Analysis: Most product companies, especially consumer products, keep adding lot of features to their product line, however it may happen that some of the features are not really used by the consumers and some are used more and effective analysis of this data captured by various mobile devices and other RFID based inputs can provide valuable insights to the product companies.

Future Direction Analysis: The trends in each business are analyzed by research groups and this information is available through industry specific portals or even common web blogs. Constant analysis of this futuristic data will help enterprises to look forward to future and bring them to their product lines.

Summary
Big data analytics provide new ways for businesses and government to analyze unstructured data which so far have been rejected by the data cleansing routines in a typical enterprise data warehouse scenario. However as evident from the use cases above, these analyses will go a long way in improving the operations of the organizations. We will see more convergence of the products and appliances in this space in the coming days.

Labels: Analytics, Big Data, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:46 PM 0 Comments