Five Initial Steps to Meet the Governance, Risk and Compliance Obligations Brought on by Today's Big Data File Stores

The accelerating increase in the amount of unstructured Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is leaving IT organizations struggling with how to store and manage all of this new information. Aside from just providing the underlying storage infrastructure to host this amount of data, companies are also faced with the task of properly managing their Big Data file stores to meet existing governance, risk and compliance obligations. To do so, there are five steps they can take now to position their organization to meet them.

Labels: Big Data, Compliance, eDiscovery, FISMA, FRCP, Governance, GRC, HIPPA, Information Governance, Legal, Litigation, Risk, Sarbanes-Oxley

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:50 AM 0 Comments

eDiscovery in the Cloud is Obviously Working

eDiscovery in the cloud is obviously working as this week Autonomy. a global leader in eDiscovery and GRC infrastructure software for the enterprise, announced that  they are now managing over 17 Petabytes of email, documents, and multimedia data on 6,500 servers on 8 data centers around the world. Seventeen Petabytes is equal to more than 11 times the size of the 10 billion photos on Facebook, or 226 years of HD video.

I think that this announcement answers questions about whether or not the enterprise will allow its data outside the firewall.  And, to a certain degree answers the debate about the future of cloud computing in the eDiscovery and GRC markets.

As a cloud based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) evangelist of the past 10 years,  I am really pleased to see that cloud based computing is gong mainstream and gaining momentum within the enterprise.  And, I am even more pleased to see these trends in eDiscovery and GRC market.

However, as I am also a best-in-class advocate and evangelist, it is disappointing to see that a vendor with a monolithic solution based on a proprietary database (IDOL) seems to have taken the lead in cloud based computing.  Don’t get me wrong, I am very impressed with what Autonomy has accomplished and have tremendous respect for their technology.  That being, said I am now curious about market penetration and acceptance, hosted data amounts and SaaS based application utilization by best-in-class component technologies in the same markets that Autonomy is playing.

We all know about the success of salesforce.com.   I wonder which technology vendor or technology vendors will take on Autonomy with an more open systems best-in-class type approach and rise to the level of success as a salesforce.com?

In some respects, the answer to the question of who is competing with Autonomy may be found in the fact that there are no other providers that have put all of the “best-in-class” solutions together along with workflow management under a single enterprise class data center.  And that each of the individual SaaS based technology providers is only marketing a component of the overall solution and therefore doesn’t really have a single source solution to compete with Autonomy.

So, is the answer that some service provider needs to bring all of this together?  I have been studying several potential candidates over the past 12 months and will be reporting on their offering(s) and their potential impact on the market before the end of the year.  Stay tuned.
The full text of the Autonomy press release is as follows:

Cambridge, UK and SAN FRANCISCO – October 12, 2010 – Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced that Autonomy's private cloud computing platform has reached a new data processing milestone, extending its lead as the world's largest private cloud. Autonomy private cloud now manages over 17 Petabytes of email, documents, and multimedia data on 6,500 servers on 8 data centers around the world. Seventeen Petabytes is equal to more than 11 times the size of the 10 billion photos on Facebook, or 226 years of HD video.

The continued dramatic growth of Autonomy's private cloud is the result of Autonomy's unique, meaning-based approach to cloud computing, as well as the rapid adoption for multichannel marketing applications. Powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), Autonomy's private cloud automatically recognizes concepts and patterns in the billions of files it ingests and indexes every day. The ability to automatically understand the meaning within all forms of data provides a significant advantage to the customer, whether it's a compliance officer or lawyer responsible for archiving and reviewing emails, video, and social media posts around a particular case, or a chief marketing officer looking to deliver the most relevant and proven content to a website visitor in real-time.

As a result, Autonomy is now the dominant leader in a range of private cloud computing applications. Autonomy is driving rapid uptake amongst marketers looking for a cost-effective, fast, and turnkey platform for hosted marketing applications. For instance, a marketing team can form a virtual chain with its network of design and advertising agencies, to securely collaborate on the development of rich media content. Autonomy's cloud-based marketing modules include Autonomy Optimost, Autonomy TeamSite, and Autonomy Virage MediaBin.

Likewise, corporate legal departments are increasingly turning to Autonomy to form a virtual private chain with their law firm partners, in order securely collaborate on relevant information for a particular investigation or case. This cloud-based approach to eDiscovery results in radically compressed timeframes for the eDiscovery process. Autonomy's private cloud processed 36,000 eDiscovery audits year-to-date, producing 48 Terabytes of eDiscovery data. Autonomy's cloud-based information governance modules include Autonomy Consolidated Archive, Early Case Assessment, Introspect, Legal Hold, Records Manager, Supervisor, and iManage WorkSite.

"Most technology providers consider cloud computing to be nothing more than making the contents and applications in a digital storage box accessible via the internet," said Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy. "However, Autonomy's meaning-based approach to cloud computing brings intelligence to a range of applications, from archiving to eDiscovery to marketing. Autonomy provides the ideal platform for our Protect and Promote customers, who are dealing with an increasing array of content to govern and apply policy to, produce for eDiscovery investigations and review, and who are seeking greater agility in launching multichannel campaigns that resonate with their customers."
Autonomy's private cloud is hosted in state-of-the-art and high-security data centers. The data centers are under 24/7 surveillance, and each one undergoes annual Statement of Accounting Standard number 70 or "SAS 70" audits. Two fully synchronized, geographically separated systems provide complete data and system redundancy and parallel processing of all tasks. The design addresses all aspects of multi-tenancy, such as multiple firewalls and virus protection, and is ideally qualified to support the performance and volume requirements that are necessary for processing the rapidly expanding number of corporate formats and unified communications – including all forms of text, audio, and video.

About Autonomy
Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, spearheads the Meaning Based Computing movement. IDC recently recognized Autonomy as having the largest market share and fastest growth in the worldwide search and discovery market. Autonomy's technology allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data, including unstructured information, such as text, email, web pages, voice, or video. Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications including pan-enterprise search, customer interaction solutions, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery, records management, archiving, business process management, web content management, web optimization, rich media management and video and audio analysis.

Autonomy's customer base is comprised of more than 20,000 global companies, law firms and federal agencies including: AOL, BAE Systems, BBC, Bloomberg, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Deutsche Bank, DLA Piper, Ericsson, FedEx, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds Banking Group, NASA, Nestlé, the New York Stock Exchange, Reuters, Shell, Tesco, T-Mobile, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. More than 400 companies OEM Autonomy technology, including Symantec, Citrix, HP, Novell, Oracle, Sybase and TIBCO. The company has offices worldwide. Please visit http://www.autonomy.com/ to find out more.

Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Labels: Autonomy, Compliance, eDiscovery, Governance, GRC, Litigation Service Providers, Litigation Software, Risk and Compliance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:17 AM 0 Comments

Is Autonomy the Undisputed Heavy Weight Champion?

I spent the first segment of my career (please note that I didn’t use the word half as it is just too depressing) in the enterprise software market competing against Oracle with a variety of startups and early stage organizations and fielded a few consulting organizations that relied on non-Oracle database systems (e.g. Microsoft SQL).  I am citing this history as experience to draw an analogy between the early days of “dealing with” the market perception of  Oracle to the current phenomena of the market considering Autonomy as the undisputed heavy weight champion of  the enterprise search and content management world for eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC).

And, as with the crowing of any champion, there are supporters and detractors on both sides spewing innuendo, have truths, unsubstantiated case studies, etc.  Its almost as exciting as a national election or the World Cup (well maybe not the World Cup).
As an example, in a July 12, 2010 Blog post by Stephen Arnold titled, “Autonomy: A Real Success. CMSWatch: Maybe Another Real Miss?”,  Mr.  Arnold takes exception to a Blog post from the CMSWatch Blog by Tony Byrne.  Both of these posts are excellent as they “stir the Autonomy pot” and therefore I will include them at the end of my post.  However, I think that, given Mr. Arnold’s agnostic nature, it is interesting that he seems to an advocate for Autonomy.

Mr. Arnold states that Autonomy is on track to hit $1.0 billion by the end of calendar 2010. The company has a proven track record of improving the performance of the companies it acquires. Autonomy’s management has demonstrated its ability to integrate quickly its acquired products with IDOL (the firm’s integrated data operating layer). The result is Autonomy’s knack of transforming the acquired companies’ position in their markets.
He goes on to state that there are other data that shed light on Autonomy’s track record, which I have documented Autonomy’s technology in my writings such as Beyond Search (Gilbane, 2009), the Enterprise Search Report (CMSWatch.com, 2004-2006), and Successful Enterprise Search Management (Galatea, 2009). Here are three points that must not be overlooked:

1. Autonomy has 20,000 plus customers plus around 1,000 licensees of its technologies for use in other enterprise software and systems
2. Autonomy has made intelligent acquisitions that has given the firm a strong presence in eDiscovery, rich media, and fraud detection. Autonomy has recently pushed into online marketing using capabilities from Ineterwoven and its IDOL framework. My research reveals that Autonomy has acquired companies to bring its technology to new markets so more content can be understood.
3. Autonomy has grown its revenues and generated a profit, making it possible for other UK based technology companies to ride the Autonomy horse in the race for government and venture funding.

I am not going to dispute any of Mr. Arnold’s statements as that is not the point of my post (please note that later on I will dispute the fact that all of Autonomy’s clients are happy).  I am just using these posts as proof that the same arguments that I heard about Oracle are now beginning to surface about Autonomy.  Let’s list a few of them:

1. Oracle/Autonomy has so many clients and licenses that why would a prospect even consider another vendor?
2. Oracle/Autonomy has acquired all of the best new technologies on the market so why would a prospect even consider another vendor?
3. Oracle / Autonomy management is so obviously smarter than anyone else in the market and therefore why would a prospect even consider another vendor?

The market bought into this “line of thinking” and the Oracle sales teams perpetuated the myths and used it to their advantage.  In fact, I can remember prospects telling me that they really liked my Oracle “knock off” (their words not mine) and understood the technological superiority of my product and understood and appreciated the TOC and ROI arguments that I had developed.  But, in the end,  and as communicated to them by the Oracle sales executive, even if Oracle turned out to be the wrong decision for all the reasons that I had sighted, they wouldn’t have to worry about losing their job if they went with Oracle and therefore that is what they were going to do.    At an even more frustrating level, I can sight prospect after prospect that spent the better part of a great lunch meeting railing against Oracle and then after the check came and was paid, indicated that they were unfortunately going to buy another round of Oracle licenses.

Don’t take my stories as “sour grapes” as I did in fact have my fair share of  success selling against Oracle.  And, don’t forget that at one point, the standard Oracle line in the industry was “What in the heck does Microsoft know about building databases?”  We all know the answer to that question (well, maybe not everyone).  The point being that technology vendors like Oracle and now maybe Autonomy think that they can reach a point of being too big to fail and so big and stable that it would be crazy to even consider alternative solutions.

Well,  the technology highway is riddled with the wreckage of companies and technologies that thought that they owned a marketplace and then one day a couple of “guys in a garage” proved them wrong.   Please note that I am not underestimating what Autonomy has done, the insightful intelligence of their founders,  their market share,  their momentum , their marketing budget or the their massive sales force. Nor am I overestimating the value of new ‘garage based” and superior technology.  I am merely stating that, just like we all saw with competition infringing upon the coronation of Oracle, we may also have the opportunity to witness some amount of legitimate competition taking market share away from Autonomy.

Now as promised, some thoughts on the “happiness” of  Autonomy users.  Mr. Arnold states in another of his pieces on Autonomy that based on research by IDC, “If the data compiled for the report are accurate, Autonomy has a big footprint and happy customers. Among the thousands of Autonomy licensees are AOL, BAE Systems, BBC, Bloomberg, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Daimler AG, Deutsche Bank, DLA Piper, Ericsson, FedEx, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds TSB, NASA, Nestle, the New York Stock Exchange, Reuters, Shell, Tesco, T-Mobile, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission”.

Once again, I am not going to dispute what Mr. Arnold and IDC are saying.  However, I am going to offer an opinion and state some unscientific anecdotes that I have.  First of all, as with Oracle, many of the Fortune 500 have a license or two of just about everything available on the market and therefore it would not seem unusual for any of the organizations stated to have a copy of Autonomy software.

Second,  enterprise buyers are very politically savvy by nature and therefore one they make a decision to purchase something like Oracle or Autonomy, it would not be within their “political nature” to indicate publically they had made a poor decision.

Now, for the unscientific anecdotes.  I spent a good portion of just about every “working” day of my career talking with Fortune 2000 business line, IT and Legal Users about their needs (pain), past successes, past failure and plans for future purchases and “nirvana“ solutions.  Obviously, Autonomy has come up a time or two. And, without fail, the main themes that I have heard from Autonomy users are; (1) they don’t much like the proprietary nature of IDOL; (2) they think that it is too expensive; (3) Autonomy over promised under performed; (4) the integration of the acquired technologies didn’t seem to be working very well,  and;  (5) they were concerned that Autonomy had gotten so big and unwieldy that it (Autonomy) would have a very hard time being innovative in the future.  And, with the goal of full disclosure, I would have to say that, just as was the case with many Oracle clients that I talked to, most of the Autonomy users had plans to purchase additional licenses.

In summary, I am actually very impressed with what Mike Lynch has done and would not argue that they in fact be the undisputed heavy weight champion of the search and content management market.  However, I would also caution both current and potential users to not overestimate Autonomy’s ability to keep pace and no underestimate the power of the free market and its ability to nurture new search and content management technology support healthy competition.

After all , who would have ever thought that we would be using our iPhones or iTouches for eDiscovery (http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/iClearwell-Sets-Standard-as-First-E-Discovery-Companion-Application-iPhone-iPad-1288443.htm).

The full text of Mr. Arnold excellent Blog post is a follows:

In Harrod’s Creek, I can easily spot the real squirrel hunters. They have food. Mostly laconic, these hunters have a big pile of dead squirrels as proof of their competence. There is also the smell of fresh burgoo wafting from their log cabins. I can smell ability from my goose pond.


Lousy hunters have empty gun belts and squirrels shot when snacking on store bought food used to lure the critters. That’s a real danger — cheap tricks or just shooting wildly, often putting bird shot in an innocent’s backsides or the face like the 2006 incident between Vice President Dick Cheney and Texas lawyer Harry Whittington. Some faux hunters have just shot themselves in the foot. Ouch!

Azure chip consultants is a synonym for “bad hunter” in my opinion. Source: http://api.ning.com/files/LCP2NCaWo-ptCqGncB3hGsX8vuh8dnDzSJ0iLnkibas_/18holeinhandG.jpg

One of my two or three readers sent me a link to a write up called “Don’t Ogle Search If You Really Want Content Management”. In my opinion, the write up relies on insinuation, not facts. (I think that some folks are immune to facts, but I find facts useful.) In the article’s headline, the word “ogle”, for example, is one I don’t associate with information retrieval. (The publisher of this “ogle” opinion piece caught my attention in July 2008 with its similar assault on Attivio. My response to that misleading article is here.)

Yet another example of factless criticism of a vendor appears in this segment of the “ogle” write up about Autonomy, one of a very small number of search and content processing vendors with a consistent track record of technical breadth, sales, revenue, and profit:

From an initial focus on enterprise search tools, Autonomy has become a roll-up vendor after acquiring a variety of other information management suppliers such as Interwoven. As a financial strategy this can be successful, and investors seem to cotton to Autonomy. As a technology strategy, vendor roll-ups are problematic. Autonomy’s technology strategy is to rip legacy search subsystems from acquired products, replace them with some pieces from its own IDOL toolset, and then promote its particular approach to search as a distinct advantage for you. Specifically, Autonomy will try to sell you on the value of “meaning-based computing.” Even if you can get your mind around what meaning-based means, you should remain skeptical that Autonomy has technically spectacular or original services here. More importantly, you risk getting sidetracked from your original goal of, say, creating a user-friendly repository for your 50,000 Office documents.

These statements are presented without verifiable foundation to support the allegations in my opinion.

Autonomy is on track to hit $1.0 billion by the end of calendar 2010. The company has a proven track record of improving the performance of the companies it acquires. Autonomy’s management has demonstrated its ability to integrate quickly its acquired products with IDOL (the firm’s integrated data operating layer). The result is Autonomy’s knack of transforming the acquired companies’ position in their markets.

But there are other data that shed light on Autonomy’s track record, which I have documented Autonomy’s technology in my writings such as Beyond Search (Gilbane, 2009), the Enterprise Search Report (CMSWatch.com, 2004-2006), and Successful Enterprise Search Management (Galatea, 2009). Here are three points that must not be overlooked:

1.Autonomy has 20,000 plus customers plus around 1,000 licensees of its technologies for use in other enterprise software and systems
2.Autonomy has made intelligent acquisitions that has given the firm a strong presence in eDiscovery, rich media, and fraud detection. Autonomy has recently pushed into online marketing using capabilities from Ineterwoven and its IDOL framework. My research reveals that Autonomy has acquired companies to bring its technology to new markets so more content can be understood.
3.Autonomy has grown its revenues and generated a profit, making it possible for other UK based technology companies to ride the Autonomy horse in the race for government and venture funding.

In December a year or so ago, at the International Online Conference, in my for-fee, end note debate, I challenged Andrew Kanter (Autonomy), Charlie Hull (Lemur Consulting), and Dr. Charles Oppenheim (Loughborough University) about their views of search, content processing, and related fields. In front of an audience of about 300 search professionals, I pointed out that key word search was dead. I pointed out that most search systems did not understand the meaning of processed information. Autonomy’s Andrew Kanter strongly and politely disagreed with me. As I recall, he said to the audience and me:

Autonomy IDOL is the only product in the market that can understand the meaning and concepts of all information in any language, including audio and video. This has big implications for the content management market as no other vendor can do this.

I demanded some concrete examples to support his position. Mr. Kanter without missing a beat gave me four concrete examples drawn from Autonomy’s work in intelligence, search enabled applications, fraud detection, and rich media.

What did I do?

I listened, considered the evidence, and I conceded defeat. Facts convinced me.

Despite the proliferation of marketing baloney, facts about search and content processing are more important than insinuations and unsubstantiated generalizations. There is no excuse for any one to venture into a technical jungle without adequate preparation and forethought. Take a short cut at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and you would have bene fired when Dr. William P. Sommers ran the the firm’s Technology Management Group. Furthermore, unsubstantiated assertions are the method of some high school journalists and third tier consultants in my opinion.

As readers of this blog know, I am no fan boy of any search and content processing vendor. Spend 15 minutes with me, and you will learn that I can and will point out fact-based strengths and weakness of the companies I monitor. (For a list of the firms I track, navigate to this link.) MBA double-talk and half-baked arguments create confusion. Verbal wild firing brings little benefit to those trying to understand the complexities of digital information.

Autonomy is on track to hit $1.0 billion by the end of calendar 2010. The firm has been able to acquire firms that add to Autonomy’s customer base and extend Autonomy’s meaning-based technology to new markets. Its Zantaz acquisition expanded Autonomy’s footprint in eDiscovery, boosted Autonomy’s position in cloud computing, and was a spark that set off a wave of activity in the eDiscovery and online archiving sector. That’s how you kill real squirrels. Take aim. Bang. New revenue.

In the search and content processing market, Autonomy has been a leader in marketing and on target acquisitions. In my opinion, OpenText (the Canadian company competing with Autonomy in some enterprise markets) has had to follow Autonomy in a “me-too” fashion in an effort to try to keep pace.

For me, Autonomy continues to grow in a landscape littered with failures. The more important question is, “Why isn’t Autonomy like Delphes, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, InQuire, Siderean, STAIRS III, and many other search vendors which have run aground?

There will be no answers in an analysis which lacks facts and insight.

And there is another important question, “Why shoot wildly at Autonomy?”

I don’t know. Grandstanding like squirrel hunters with an automatic rifle and a bag of walnuts? Fun? Frustration with life, business, or traffic to the company Web site? A need to differentiate one’s business from a farrow of third-tier consultants?

My hunch is that some “experts” see an opportunity to make money by appointing themselves mavens or satraps in search and content processing. Grabbing for a brass ring from a carousel pony seems harmless enough. The logic could run like this: I use Google. Google makes search easy. Therefore, search is easy.

What better way to get sales leads than to make unsubstantiated claims about a company that in terms of customers, financial performances, and scope is arguably one of the world’s leading vendors in information retrieval and processing?

Anyone looking at search market facts should be able to figure out that unsubstantiated assertions have zero impact on a billion dollar enterprise. Wild shots and tricks call attention to the hunter, not the prey. And what is the point of the “ogle” write up in my opinion: Marketing hoo-hah or a need for attention?

I don’t know the difference between slander and libel. I will leave that to legal eagles.

I do know that Autonomy has happy customers. Autonomy has hundreds of OEM deals that continue from year to year. Sue Feldman, IDC’s search expert, recent analysis of Autonomy was fact-based and positive. Also, I know that Autonomy is growing. What some search dilettantes do not appreciate is that search start ups in the UK have a better shot at getting funding due to the uplift from Autonomy’s success.

And there is the matter of profits.

Outfits like Goldman Sachs and other market makers pay attention to companies that make money. With your job on the line in a search procurement, would you go with a struggling vendor or with an outfit that was a market leader?

Does Autonomy have weaknesses?

What software vendor doesn’t? My Overflight service had a glitch on July 7, 2010. My goslings had to troubleshoot a mistake I made in a script. Software is difficult to make perfect. You can ask Google how the Buzz code is working out. Why not chase down Microsoft and ask about the Kin? If you have a moment, get Larry Ellison on the line and ask, “How is SES11g working out for you?”

To sum up: Constructive criticism based on solid technical understanding and demonstrable evidence delivers real value. Here in Harrod’s Creek, when I want burgoo I seek out the real hunters who hit their target without resorting to unsportsmanlike tricks. You may want to avoid the faux hunters who take short cuts, sport Travel Smith vests, and glittering generalities.

Labels: Autonomy, eDiscovery, GRC, Microsoft, Oralce, Seach Technology, Search

posted by Charles Skamser @ 12:13 PM 0 Comments

Cooperation Between Legal and IT Deteriorating

Just when we all thought that communications and cooperation between the legal departments and the Information Technology departments of the Global 2000 was starting to improve, Recommind has released the results of a survey that indicates that collaboration and cooperation is actually deteriorating.  The survey of senior IT managers at enterprises averaging 13,000 employees reveals that IT and legal teams aren't collaborating on buying decisions and question each other's commitment to and understanding of eDiscovery and regulatory compliance.

As the amount of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) continues to increase and the subsequent cost of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)  continues to increase, it is almost beyond belief that the General Counsel (GC) and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) can’t meet over a cup of coffee and agree to play nicely.   Its actually  a fairly simple task for these two organizations to work together from a technology standpoint.   However, politically, it may be a different story.  Worst case, you would think that, given the financial impact associated with the lack of communications and collaboration between IT and the Legal, the Chairman of the Board or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) would demand cooperation or find a GC and a CIO that could cooperate?

The full text of the press release from Recommind is as follows:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - June 16, 2010) -  Recommind, the leader in search-powered information risk management (IRM) software, today released results from its second annual survey that examines the working relationship between corporate IT and legal departments. While the inaugural survey revealed that a lack of collaboration between both teams was greatly hindering eDiscovery efforts, the 2010 installation demonstrates that this disconnect has dramatically worsened. The survey of senior IT managers at enterprises averaging 13,000 employees reveals that IT and legal teams aren't collaborating on buying decisions and question each other's commitment to and understanding of eDiscovery and regulatory compliance. This further endangers effective eDiscovery and regulatory responses at the exact time such activities are skyrocketing.

While legal and IT have been historically disparate, the exponential increase in content creation and the rising complexities and risks of eDiscovery and regulatory scrutiny have inexorably linked the needs and responsibilities of each department. With the average U.S. company facing 305 lawsuits at any given time -- a number that jumps to 556 for companies with more than $1 billion in revenue -- enterprises urgently need to ensure close collaboration between these critical departments or face massive financial, competitive and reputational risks as result. Recommind's survey reveals that communication between legal and IT has become decidedly worse in 2010. For example:

• In 2009, 67% of respondents described the relationship between the two departments as "good" or "very good"; in 2010, that number has dropped to 54%
• In 2009, 37% of respondents reported that IT and legal were working more closely together than the year before; that number has dropped to 27% in 2010
• In 2009, 40% of respondents stated that their IT department considered eDiscovery to be a high to very high priority; in 2010, that number has dropped to 26%
• In 2009, 82% of respondents said that IT was "very involved" in eDiscovery technology purchasing decisions, with legal being "very involved" 48% of the time.
• In 2010, IT's involvement has remained largely the same, dropping from 82% to 78%. The involvement of the legal department, however, has dropped dramatically, decreasing from 48% to 33%

In addition to measuring collaboration, the survey also examined the formalized processes between IT and legal and inter-departmental perceptions, focusing specifically on how the teams communicate with and evaluate each other. For example:

• 72% of respondents report that their IT and legal teams meet once a quarter or less; 52% meet once a year or less and 23% never meet at all
• When it comes to actually implementing eDiscovery processes, the focus of each department is also quite different: the primary goal of the IT department is "executing as quickly as possible" (35%), while the primary goal of the legal department is "complying with federal regulations and court orders" (61%)

Finally, earlier this year, Gartner Group recommended that global organizations start adding legal support managers -- a hybrid position that helps mediate between IT and legal -- to create policies and schedule and execute eDiscovery processes. It would appear that Gartner's advice is not yet being heeded; nearly 75% of the enterprises surveyed do not currently have this position filled.

"How can enterprises expect to avoid trouble in this hyper-regulatory and increasingly litigious environment when their legal and IT teams hardly talk? Effective responses to regulatory scrutiny and eDiscovery events are too complex, expensive and dangerous to have this level of miscommunication and mistrust between key departments," said Craig Carpenter, vice president of marketing, Recommind. "Having the right technology and processes in place are crucial, but everything starts with communication. Hopefully the fact that these problems are being exposed will serve as a clarion call for enterprises and the industry in general, because enterprises need a real sense of urgency if they want to avoid becoming front-page news for all the wrong reasons."

About Recommind Inc. Recommind's search-powered Information Risk Management (IRM) platform automatically accesses, organizes, collects and analyzes large volumes of information from myriad sources to address an enterprise's critical eDiscovery, compliance, email categorization and knowledge management needs. With faster, more accurate access to and greater control over information, organizations can lower risk, improve productivity, increase the value of information assets, and improve competitiveness and profits. Recommind customers include Bertelsmann, BMW, DLA Piper, Eversheds, Novartis, Shearman & Sterling, and Verizon. Recommind is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Washington DC, London, and Bonn, Germany. For more information, email info@recommind.com, or go to http://www.recommind.com/.

Labels: CEO, CIO, eDiscovery, GC, General Counsel, GRC, Recommind

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:18 AM 0 Comments

Is the Enterprise Market Eluding the Legacy Litigation Technology Providers?

Gartner foresees that worldwide eDiscovery software revenues will reach $1.2 billion in 2010, an increase of 23% over 2009. Further, according to Gartner, U.S. companies alone will spend $29.8B on GRC activities in 2010, up 3.9% from 2009.  And, just about every analyst in the world is predicting that a large percentage of these revenues will come from the enterprise.   However, I haven’t seen the legacy litigation technology providers taking advantage of this opportunity.  I believe that there are several reasons.

First of all, it wasn’t that long ago that many of these organizations were still trying to  figure out how to move from selling paper processing services to eDiscovery services and the associated technology.  It is possible that it just too soon or too much to ask them to make another paradigm shift to selling into the enterprise.

The second and biggest reason is that these legacy providers do not have sales and marketing organizations that understand how to sell into the legal and IT departments of the corporation.  And, there is a big difference between the sales cycle of selling to paralegals and litigation service groups within law firms and the complex sales cycle of an enterprise.  Where Friday donuts and a few happy hours did the trick for the law firms, the enterprise requires value propositions, ROI analysis, competitive analysis and an understanding of how the procurement process works.

The third reason is the lack of understanding of what actually goes on within the enterprise IT department and why they buy stuff.  Law firms are very much case based and/or expense based buyers as they want to pass on all cost to their clients.   Enterprises, on the other hand, are more into capital expenditures, total cost of ownership and amortizing costs over multiple cost centers for long periods of time.   Law firms have partners that can make quick buying decisions (especially if they have a big case and/or a big insurance company that is paying the bills).  Enterprises, on the other hand,  make decisions through multiple stakeholders that sit on multi-divisional committees that have to negotiate budget commitments and coordinate budget cycles.

Finally, at least for the purposes of this Blog post, law firms for the most part are comfortable with independent technology platforms with little or no integration.   In fact, there is an argument to be made that some law firms actually like technology solutions that require manual intervention that enables increased billable hours.  Enterprises, on the other hand are much more interested in integrated enterprise wide solutions that automate entire business processes.

In the end, the legacy litigation technology providers that survive will probably be absorbed into technology vendors that are providers a much broader base of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) processing and analytics.  In the meantime, the current players in the litigation technology market better figure out how to sell to the buyers that are actually buying technology.

Labels: eDiscovery, eDiscovery Market, eDiscovery Software Sales, GRC, Total Cost of Ownership

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:12 PM 1 Comments

When to Bring eDiscovery In-house or Move to Cloud Computing?

Over the past 18 months, the “big buzz” in the eDiscovery market has been that the Global 2000 are bringing eDiscovery in house.  The value proposition is that outsourcing to legal vendors, service providers and/or outside counsel is just too expensive.  And, ultimately, ensuring that it (eDiscovery) is done properly (i.e. in a legally defensible manner, etc.) is the responsibility of the General Counsel (GC) and other C level executives (i.e. CIO, CFO, CEO) anyway.

However, what about members of the Global 2000 that don’t have enough litigation to justify bringing it (eDiscovery) in-house?  And, what about all the rest of the enterprises outside of the Global 2000 (the majority of the enterprises worldwide) that never have to deal with the issues and costs of eDiscovery?

First of all, with the inevitable convergence of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (See “ Government Intervention and Oversight Driving the Convergence of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)”) all enterprises worldwide are going to have to deal with the issues of information management and reporting as it relates to eDiscovery and GRC.
So, just because you never have to respond to requests to produce information due to litigation, it is negligent to not  be prepared (e.g. have a data retention policy and a plan for eDiscovery).  And now, with the accelerating increase in government intervention and oversight, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) are almost certainly going to affect all enterprises worldwide in some way shape or form.

So, given the cost of “outsourcing” along with this inevitable new playing field, when do you bring eDiscovery in-house? Or, given the convergence of eDiscovery and GRC, maybe a better question is when should the enterprise have an  in-house plan and associated capabilities to support whatever legal and/or GRC requests come along?

The answer for some may be to keep outsourcing.  However, those that do had better brush up on their responsibilities (outsourcing or not) as the courts are no longer accepting ignorance as a defense.

Another alternative maybe to investigate Cloud Computing as a cost effective way of moving eDiscovery / GRC in-house without having to invest in all of the IT infrastructure.  Obviously, archiving data (e.g. email) “in the Cloud” has matured to the point where it is almost a “no brainer” for most enterprises to consider (no hate mail from the anti Cloud contingency please as your security concerns are beginning to wear a bit thin).  And, most if not all of the applications that it takes to support eDiscovery / GRC processing such as Early Case Assessment (ECA), Legal Holds, Search and Analytics and Document Review are now available as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).  Moving large amounts of data around and maintaining an appropriate chain-of-custody are still issues that need to be watched closely in this environment.

Enterprises worldwide, whether in or outside the Global 2000, are having to deal with the paradigm shift and subsequent realities of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) reporting.   And, the pressures of the worldwide financial crisis along with the accelerating increase in government intervention and oversight have unfortunately added another layer of complexity.

However, Cloud Computing is now a very viable alternative when considering moving your eDiscovery and GRC operations in-house.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Compliance, Convergence, Early Case Assessment, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Costs, eDiscovery Market, Electronically Stored Information, Governance, GRC, Risk and Compliance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:16 AM 0 Comments

Government Intervention and Oversight Driving the Convergence of eDiscovery with Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)

With the accelerating increase in the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) along with increased government intervention and oversight, enterprises worldwide are experiencing an unprecedented increase in investigations and reporting  for eDiscovery and Governance, Risk  and Compliance (GRC).   With the financial pressures from today’s economic realities to reduce costs, you would have guessed that most enterprises would be investigating internalizing and centralizing the common activities of eDiscovery and GRC. 

However, as humorous, unbelievable or sad (or some combination of all three) as it may seem, this has just not been the case.

Historically, eDiscovery has been a reactive and outsourced process with little or no involvement from the Information Technology (IT) departments and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) has been something that the “bean counters” will worry about.

However, in 2010 and beyond with increased government intervention and oversight in just about every aspect of the corporate world,  enterprises worldwide are beginning to realize that eDiscovery and all of its associated practices and requirements and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and all of its associated practices and requirements, may actually be “one- in-the-same” from many respects.  In other words, these previously disparate and most times redundant practices of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) are converging.

After all, how “forward thinking” do you need to be to “step back” from the daily complications of Global 2000 Information Technology (IT) and realize that, at some level and with a few paragraphs of caveats, it would be a “good thing” to retain all of this Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in some centralized repository, hook up one of today’s analytic platforms and then enable anyone within the enterprise, including eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) practitioners to extract the ESI that they need to full their requirements.

Well, if you throw Data Retention Policy along with enterprise intra and inter divisional politics and inability of legacy systems to talk to one another into the mix, it may be a bit more complicated that I have portrayed. And, if you consider the legal requirements and associated ramifications incumbent in collecting and process ESI for a legal matter, eDiscovery does have its fair share of subtle nuiaces to consider.

However, the fact remains that from a pure financial standpoint. most enterprises world wide will have no viable options short of “continuing to drop the ball” but to integrate and converge eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). 

Looking at this issue from an “investigative” standpoint, Albert Barsocchini, Guidance Software, wrote an excellent article that appeared on May 14, 2010 on the Wall Street and Technology Website titled, “Financial Institutions Now Taking a Holistic Approach to eDiscovery, Internal Investigations and Compliance”.

In this article, Mr. Barsocchini states that, “The 2009 financial meltdown has resulted in new lawsuits and the possibility of increased regulation for many financial firms. Pending legislation that will boost regulation of big banks and hedge funds are two recent examples of this trend. Similarly, legal action against Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and others illustrate the increasing need to be able to respond to an increase in both civil and criminal legal inquiries.”

He goes on to contend that, “These trends are driving a trend toward the corporate legal departments at financial institutions taking a unified approach on the mission critical functions of internal investigations, eDiscovery, audit and compliance. This has now become a boardroom-level issue. “

The “perfect storm is” is here and therefore it is time to stop debating about whether or not it is coming.  It is now time to debate how to deal with it.  Therefore, over the next 90 days, I am planning to evaluate and report on the “best-in-class” technologies and best practices that will provide the foundation for this convergence to occur.  I am also going to be reporting on several successful case studies.  So, I invite technology vendors, consultants and enterprises worldwide to contribute input and comments.  I look forward to hearing from you.

The full text of Mr. Barsocchini’s article is as follows:
 
The 2009 financial meltdown has resulted in new lawsuits and the possibility of increased regulation for many financial firms. Pending legislation that will boost regulation of big banks and hedge funds are two recent examples of this trend. Similarly, legal action against Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and others illustrate the increasing need to be able to respond to an increase in both civil and criminal legal inquiries.
These trends are driving a trend toward the corporate legal departments at financial institutions taking a unified approach on the mission critical functions of internal investigations, eDiscovery, audit and compliance. This has now become a boardroom-level issue.

Internal investigations can include issues involving human resource, fraud, unauthorized network access and intellectual property theft. eDiscovery can include both civil and criminal evidence collections as well as regulatory inquiries. Compliance covers data audit (personal identifiable information, record management enforcement, etc.), data security, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) fraud investigations, to name a few.
Traditionally, these types of investigations have been conducted by separate corporate departments and rarely have they been brought under one roof from a technology or departmental resource point of view.
Challenges Driving Convergence But recently, there has been a clear shift to consolidate these areas for efficiency, cost-effectiveness and other internal reasons. Companies are realizing that these departments can no longer operate in isolation and still meet today’s challenges.

There are a variety of challenges driving convergence, including increased litigation and internal investigations, the pressures of evolving case law, increasing volumes of data, reliance on smaller staffs and complex data privacy laws.

There’s also the possible need to defend the technology used in the investigation to prove that the computer program used to discover the computer evidence (ESI) generated authentic evidence. In these cases, the proponent of the evidence must testify to the validity of the program or programs utilized in the process. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993) is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that sets forth a legal test to determine the validity of scientific evidence and its relevance to the case at issue. On the other hand, in state courts we see the Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923) test employed which is used to determine whether a scientific technique for obtaining, enhancing or analyzing evidence is generally accepted within the relevant scientific community as a valid process.

Judges are also behind this convergence trend, advocating that companies bring eDiscovery in house. For example in Phillip M. Adams & Assocs., L.L.C. v. Dell, Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26964 (D. Utah Mar. 27, 2009) the court scolded the producing party, Phillip Adams, for not having appropriate technology to reasonable access potentially relevant electronically stored information (ESI). The court found it unacceptable for a party to hide behind inadequate information management systems as the reason why it could not produce relevant documents.

In Spieker v. Quest Cherokee, LLC, 2009 WL 2168892 (D. Kan. July 21, 2009) the court admonished the defendant for claiming they did not have the ability to generate the requested ESI materials in-house. "This court is aware of no case where a party has been excused from producing discovery because its employees ‘have not previously been asked to search for and/or produce discovery materials.”

Investigations are Similar in Nature
The typical investigation, no matter what practice area, tends to be reactive. Because every investigation is triggered by misconduct or legal proceedings, it is tempting to conduct every investigation in an ad hoc manner without any consistency. The more effective model is to conduct the investigation in a consistent manner under one roof using a single technology, if possible.

The ties that bind these internal inquiries are: they all have legal consequences and they all require similar investigation processes and techniques with similar consequences if not performed correctly. For example, the normal information security response to a network intrusion is to determine the scope of the breach, identify what data was compromised and patch the vulnerability. However, if these are not investigated properly, the company will not have the necessary evidence to properly prosecute a perpetrator either civilly or criminally. The information security department now needs to collect evidence properly according to forensic protocols and procedures for court validity, while at the same time doing their job to fix the breach.

Additionally, the typical triggering events (criminal misconduct, security breach, litigation, employee complaints, ethics hotlines, receipt of a subpoena, whistleblowers, competitors and customers, shareholder demands, regulatory audits and inquiries, responding to governmental investigations) for eDiscovery, compliance, security and audit requires immediate involvement from the legal department before any type of investigation can be initiated.

Legal-Centric Approach
Depending on the type of event trigger, the legal department should always be the first to be notified. They need to decide whether to investigate, who should be involved (human resources, the board of directors, outside counsel, security, etc.), the scope of the investigation, how it should be conducted and what will be done with the results of the investigation. This legal-centric approach provides companies with the best opportunity to get on top of the case early for early evaluation of the best “go forward” strategy.
This need for a unified approach is obvious when you see more cases involving network security issues, data privacy and the improper handling of electronically stored information. Because security, data privacy and collecting evidence can have significant legal consequences, corporate legal departments concerned about litigation and compliance are better equipped to coordinate and drive technology purchases than IT departments who are mainly concerned about data security and general computer network issues.
Overcoming institutional barriers within corporations is the biggest challenge to having a unified approach to eDiscovery, compliance and internal investigations. However, we are starting to see information security departments, IT and the legal departments work together to break down communication barriers and realize the benefits of cooperation and coordination.

The investigation risks are similar too - failure to find all relevant evidence, failure to properly preserve and authenticate relevant ESI, failure to meet deadlines, failure to document the process, failure to have a consistent workflow, unintentionally altering the evidence and evidence spoliation. Flawed investigations can seriously damage a corporation’s reputation, depress stock prices and hurt employee morale as well.

In all of these cases, the enterprises need to search, identify, preserve, collect and process evidence quickly for attorney or law enforcement or regulatory compliance review. Getting to the evidence over the network early is critical to the success or failure of an investigation.

For cost, efficiency, consistency and to mitigate risk, it makes sense to have a standardized, repeatable and defensible process for all types of corporate investigations. More companies today are creating a single team and using a single enterprise-class technology to perform these types of investigations. Companies without a coordinated policy and strategy will spend more on e-discovery, compliance and internal investigations than those taking a holistic approach.

Effective Response Plan
The need to become "investigation ready" is driving companies to assess, analyze and plan, and unify their investigation response practice. An effective response plan requires an organization to anticipate proactively the type of investigations that could be initiated and develop an offensive response strategy.

Technology is the linchpin to the overall implementation of a proactive response plan. When looking for enterprise technology to handle multiple types of computer investigations, look for technology that can search for evidence over the network from a central location, collect the evidence in a forensically sound manner and properly preserve all metadata. Additionally, having technology that can also do a network-based forensic examination is important for IP theft, SOX investigations and HR cases.

Recommended best practices include having a comphrensive corporate investigation and document retention policy, developing a repeatable process to properly identify and retain evidence for both civil and criminal matters, developing a response strategy for both inside and outside counsel, properly identifying event triggers and creating a decision tree, determining who in the enterprise should control and conduct the investigation, determining how the investigation should be conducted, what should the scope of the investigation be, and what will be done with the results of the investigation.

The rewards of becoming investigation ready and centralizing the process will help a company have a strategic advantage by quickly and efficiently identifying potential liability and effectively limiting risk while allowing the company to control the process before governmental or other third party intervention. It also gives the corporation more time to develop a response or defense strategy, which may ultimately minimize overall criminal and civil exposure and reduce the likelihood of lawsuits. Finally, it can make a corporation look more responsible to the courts, government regulators, shareholders, and auditors, thus minimizing the effect of any negative publicity that has arisen from allegations of wrongdoing while also satisfying the board’s fiduciary obligations to the stockholders.

Ultimately, the goal is to establish a legally-defensible response plan that builds upon prior experience, provides a common language and establishes an effective evidence lifecycle management framework to minimize risk and increase the effectiveness of an investigation. It is a critical piece of overall corporate policy. Combining these investigation areas will provide an organized business workflow that efficiently combines people, processes and technology.

Labels: 2010 eDiscovery Predictions and Trends, Convergence, eDiscovery, Governance, GRC, Risk and Compliance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:06 AM 1 Comments

New Incident/Fraud Prevention and Response Platform for Enterprise eDiscovery and GRC

This post announcing a new incident management platform may seem like a bit of stretch for an eDiscovery Blog. However, with the convergence of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), Incident/Fraud Prevention and Response and managing the process of Digital Forensics within the enterprise is actually a topic, technology and business processes that everyone involved with eDiscovery within the enterprise needs to start paying attention to.

Therefore I thought that it was appropriate to announce the release of release of version 3.0 of the IncMan Suite from DFLabs in Italy. The IncMan Suite contains IncMan Module, Digital Investigation Manager (DIM) and ITILity Help Desk Module to enable an organization to quickly and easily catalog every security incident from detection and mitigation to closure. It appears to be a really great solution for any organization that needs this functinoality but isn't ready or doesn't have the resources to install one of the legacy solutions. IncMan is definitely a really great example of the new breed of Web based applications (SaaS) that are going to give enterprise decision makers reason to upgrade from the bulky and expensive legacy systems that they have used in the past. It's just about time.

Raju Shanbhag, a TMCnet Contributor wrote an excellent intorductory overview of IncMan on the TMCnet.com site on Febraury 23, 2010. The full text of the from Raju Shanbhag article is as follows:

Managing information security incidents is a huge task for any company. DFLabs is looking to make this task simpler and easier to handle with the release of version 3.0 of the IncMan Suite. With the help of this solution, companies can manage information security incidents, within a single framework.

Companies need to adhere to their information security strategies to ensure business security. The information security involves many areas such as Incident/Fraud Prevention and Response, Digital Forensics, e-discovery, Litigation Support etc.


The complete version of the DFLabs’ IncMan Suite contains IncMan Module, Digital Investigation Manager (DIM) and ITILity Help Desk Module. It contains three modules that can operate both autonomously and integrated. Also, to catalog every security incident from detection and mitigation to closure and report generation, IncMan module is presented as an integrated component.

“We are particularly proud of the development effort that went into this latest release of our IncMan Suite,” declared Dario Forte, CEO and Founder of DFLabs. “Thanks to this new arsenal of tools, CIO, CISO, Incident Responders and Forensics Examiners, are now better equipped to respond to cyber-security incidents, precisely assessing the costs involved, documenting every detail for legal and audit purposes, and guaranteeing an unassailable Chain of Custody.”

DFLabs’ IncMan Suite ensures the compliance with standards such as IODEF (RFC 5070). It enables the investigator to catalog and manage all information related to a breach of security incident. DIM, the Digital Investigation Manager, is the forensic and evidence management module. With the help of Chain of Custody details and interactions with authorities, this component manages images from the forensic duplication of the memory, photographic catalog, log files.

In November 2009, eDiscovery Solutions Group entered into a partnership with DFLabs to provide a wide range of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and eDiscovery consulting, services and technology for eDiscovery Solutions Group clients throughout the world. Also, other partners from the eDiscovery Solutions Group consortium will enable DFLabs to expand its GRC and eDiscovery offering.

Labels: DFLabs, eDiscovery, Governance, GRC, Risk and Compliance

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:36 PM 0 Comments

How is Outside Counsel Doing wtih eDiscovery?

I grew up in the world of Global 5000 Business Process Automation (BPA), Business Process Improvement (BPI), Business Process Management (BPM) and Balanced Score Cards. Therefore, I can sling information and business consulting acronyms with the best of them. However, now that I live in the world of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), I am faced with an industry that, for the most part (there are some exceptions), is just not familiar with the practice of BPM or its benefits. And, in many cases it is literally a matter of "not even knowing what you don't know." Therefore, I believe that the next big market for BPM and all of its associated glory is the GRC and eDiscovery markets. After all, I can't help by wonder if there are any General Counsel in the Global 2000 that would like to know how their outside counsel would score on an independent eDiscovery and GRC Assessment. And, there may even be some CEOs or Board of Director members that would like know how their legal departments would score on an independent internal eDiscovery and GRC Assessment.

As a place to start, I wanted to comment on some of the finding by Elise Olding in the Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00165528 from March 12, 2009 titled, "It's a Matter of Survival: Use BPM to Drive Out Costs".

Ms. Olding put forth the proposition that, "In a troubled economy, struggling companies often cut costs broadly and blindly without understanding whether those cuts further compromise their survival." This statement should ring very true today for both the legal departments of the Global 5000 and certainly law firms as they have both dramatically cut costs across the board without understanding the effect it may have on their ability to effectively handle eDiscovery. She went on to state that, "For struggling companies, business process management is a lifeline that helps them survive by reducing and avoiding costs in this volatile and turbulent economy." I contend that the same holds true for law firms and legal departments as they struggle to compete and survive. However, I am also going to contend that due to the fact that very little is truly understood and very little has been documented about the processes involved in GRC and eDiscovery, even without the pressures of the current economic situation, BPM would be an excellent approach for law firms and legal departments to employ to ensure that they are carrying their duties in regards to the serious issues of governance, compliance, risk management and eDiscovery in a manner that will enable the best possible outcomes.

Whether its Sarbanes-Oxley compliance or ensuring that you are following the rules of handling Electronically Stored Information (ESI) as stated in the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), leaders from Global 5000 legal departments and partners at the major law firms need to seriously consider beginning to employ the Business Process Management (BPM) methodologies and technologies that have been successfully used throughout the rest of the Global 5000 enterprises for many years.

Labels: Assessments, BPM, Business Process Automation, Compliance, FRCP, Global 5000, Governance, GRC, In re: Fannie Mae Securities Litigation, Law Firms, Sarbanes-Oxley

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:47 PM 0 Comments

Top 10 CIO Priorities for 2010 Through the GRC/eDiscovery Prisim

As eDiscovery moves into the IT deparments of the Global 2000 as a subset of GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance), I plan to start talking more and more about the eDiscovery paradigm shift in the context of the IT department. As such, this morning I ran across the results of the The Society for Information Management (SIM) surveyed CIOs and IT executive leaders about their top priorities for 2010, based on a list of 20 IT and business concerns. A great summary of the results of this survey can be found on the Network World website in a Septebmer 25, 2009 article by Denise Dubie titled, "CIOs seek better results, lower costs".

Labels: 2010 eDiscovery Predictions and Trends, CIO, eDiscovery, GRC, IT

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:13 AM 1 Comments