EMC and Kazeon Deal Restores Hope for eDiscovery Technology Entreprenuers

Having spent most of my career as a serial entrprenuer dealing in disruptive software technologies and market paradigm shifts, I was intrigued by the EMC acquisition of Kazeon. Not so much by the fact that EMC acquired Kazeon to round out it's "eDiscovery" or document management offering, but more by the rumored price of between $75M (source: blog post by Aaref Hilaly on September 1, 2009 titled, "EMC Acquires Kazeon For $75 million To Round-Out SourceOne Archiving & E-Discovery Solution".) and $150M (source: blog post by Eric Savitz September 3, 2009 on Tech Trader Daily titled, "Update: EMC Paying $150 Million For Kazeon Systems").

Given the continued world economic crisis that we all face on a daily basis, it is "reassuring" for us entreprenuers to know that you can actually realize an exit strategy of 10-20 times trailing revenues, with or without turning a profit, and you don't even have to be the leader in your market space.

Having written 20-30 serious business plans, pitched literally hundreds of investors from local angles to wall street hedge fund managers and raised my fair share of venture capital during the go go days of the dot com craze and beyond, 10-20 times trailing revenues might have been considered an "OK" deal. However, since the dot com crash, even through valuation negotiations and exit strategy discussions may start with 10 times trailing revenues (great expectations and a postivie attitude is a valued trait for technology entreprenuers), they realistically end up closer to some smaller multiple of projected profits. So, the Kazeon deal has created hope for us entreprneurs and our willing accomplishes on the investment side.

Having pitched all the arguments for what it costs to develope new technology, what the value is of an installed base of users and the financial tradeoffs of build vs. buy/acquire, I would have enjoyed being a party to this discussions. If for no other reason then to watch the dynamics of the competing interests. EMC obviously wanted this deal to happen. And, after $60M in investments by Redpoint Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Focus Ventures, JK&B Capital and Goldmanm Sachs, Kazeon was probably willing to listen. Given this, I wonder what the initial offers were, what EMC would have ultimately paid and what Kazeon would have ultimately accepted. Maybe $75M - $150M was the right number?

What this all means to EMC stockholders and how it advances the willingness of investors to inject more cash into the development of new eDiscovery technology or to fund additional rollups or integrations, remains to be seen. However, at the very least, it reminds us all that this is a very exciting time for eDiscovery technology entreprenuers.

Hopefully, Kazeon will prove to be a great acquisition for EMC, the purchase price will prove to be a real bargin and a new valuation benchmarck will have been born or maybe reborn.

The full text of Aaref's blog post on the EMC acquisition of Kazeon is as follows:

Large storage vendor buys small electronic discovery software company to round-out broader corporate initiative.” That was the story in December 2007, when Seagate bought e-discovery company Metalincs for its i365 solution; and, it’s the same story today as EMC announced its acquisition of Kazeon for its SourceOne archiving solution. The terms of the EMC-Kazeon deal were not disclosed, but sources with knowledge of the transaction tell me that the acquisition price is approximately $75 million. That’s slightly less than what Seagate paid for Metalincs ($82 million), and less than what FTI Consulting paid for Attenex ($88 million). But it’s well within the usual range of $50-100 million that most acquirers pay for technology that has not yet matured into a business.

The deal will come as a relief to Kazeon’s long-suffering shareholders. The company was founded in 2003 and, over the past 6 years, it raised over $60 million in equity financing, double the amount it usually takes successful software companies to reach profitability. But despite all that investment, revenue has been hard to come by. According to former Kazeon employees, the company’s revenue totaled only $7 million over the past 12 months. Perhaps as a result, there’s been a lot of management turnover, and last year the board retained a recruiter to find a new CEO. In light of all that, selling the company for $75 million, or 10 times trailing revenue, is a great outcome for Kazeon’s shareholders. It also provides some level of job security for Kazeon’s employees, many of whom have been offered retention bonuses to stick around.

On the other side of the coin, the deal also makes sense for EMC, which needed to flesh out SourceOne, its recent re-branding of the Email Extender archive. In launching SourceOne in April 2009, EMC described it as an integrated portfolio of products: SourceOne Email Management for email archiving; Discovery Manager for legal holds of email; Celerra and Centera for storage; and Discovery Collector for identifying and collecting data from desktops and file shares. EMC owned all of those products except one: Discovery Collector, which instead was to come from EMC Select Partner, StoredIQ. It is widely known that EMC tried repeatedly to acquire StoredIQ but was rebuffed. So instead, it purchased Kazeon (i.e., the Kazeon Information Server) so that it now owns all aspects of SourceOne and does not have to rely on partners.

Will this eDiscovery deal be successful? We will have to wait and see, but Seagate’s experience is not encouraging. A year after it acquired Metalincs, Seagate laid off most of the staff and hired UBS to help it sell what was left of the electronic discovery company. There have not been any takers.

The full text of Eric's post is as follows:

EMC (EMC) is paying $150 million to acquire Kazeon Systems, Tech Trader Daily has learned.
Yesterday, EMC announced the deal, but terms were not disclosed. A number of trade publications have reported the price tag on the deal as $75 million. But TTD has learned that the actual price was twice that much. The company said yesterday that the deal will not have a material impact on revenue or EPS for the quarter or the year.
Investors in Kazeon include Redpoint Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Focus Ventures, JK&B Capital and Goldmanm Sachs. The Mountain View, California company sells “eDiscovery” software, used for discovery and litigation support by large companies, law firms, legal service providers and consultants.

Labels: eDiscvoery, EMC/Documentum, Kazeon, Valuations, Venture Capital

posted by Charles Skamser @ 7:13 AM 0 Comments

Electronic Data Discovery Workflow and Best Practices

Over the past twenty four (24) months I have had the opportunity to meet with law firms, the litigation and IT departments of the Fortune 2000, regional litigation service providers, eDiscovery consultants and eDiscovery technology vendors to discuss the current state and technologies of eDiscovery.  Based upon these discussions, I have come to the conclusion that there are substantial differences in approach and a complete lack of standards in Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) workflow and best practices throughout the entire industry.

Even after the tremendous body of  EDD research and information being proliferated by the Sedona Conference Institute and the other various groups associated with the Sedona Conference along with the excellent EDD guidelines and standards established by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, there is still a wide chasm between what these experts have established as the EDD standards and how the main stream litigation market processes EDD.

As such, I am planning to spend the next two (2) - three (3) weeks soliciting detailed input on "real world" EDD workflow and best practices from all available sources and then publish the results.  Please note that this exercise is not intended to replace any of the work done by either the EDRM or the Sedona Conference.    However, I believe that we could lay the foundation for creating a mainstream guide to EDD.

As a place to start, I would like to offer the following questions for discussion:

1. What tools are being used at each step of the EDRM model if any?
2. Are these tools integrated or do you have to move data in between them?
3. If you have to move data, is anyone really using the new EDRM XML standard?
4. How many IT organizations have instituted data retention policies with litigation in mind?
5. How many IT organizations are using technologies like Kazeon or Autonomy for for in-place collection, processing and analysis, in an integrated workflow within a single application?
6. Are the tools as mention in # 5 able to collect all of the data?  And, if not, how the remainder of the data being collected and integrated?
7. How does litigation hold technology  from vendors such as Exterro fit into the process? And, are they tightly integrated or loosely coupled requiring manual management?
8. Where do early case assessment technologies from vendors such as Clearwell Systems fit into the process?
9. Is the market finding that the tools as listed in # 8 are sufficient for "flattening" all of the embedded files from the Electronically Stored Information (ESI) or are they only used to gather and produce a general file extension catalogue?
10. Is the market using tools like Clearwell for early case assessment and then importing the data into standard EDD processing tools like LAW and iPro for production processing?
11. Given the answer to # 9, is the market concerned that "smoking gun" ESI is not being discovered?
12. Given the answers to # 9 - # 11, how are these tools being used in conjunction with  requirements and preparation for the 26(f) conferences?
13. When is culling and de-dupe taking place and what technologies are being used?
14. Are the keywords for culling and filtering being externally determined by the legal teams or in some way being internally generated by technology?
15. Where do conceptual search technologies such as Orcatec and leading de-dupe technologies such as Equivio  fit into this process?
16. What percentage of ESI is the culling and de-duping process removing from the data pool?
17. How is the market completing the various review processes and what tools are they using?
18. Is the market doing early case assessment with native files, loading the results into a review tool, completing an initial "quick peek" of the data to develop keywords and then loading the data back into an EDD processing solution for another culling and de-dupe pass?  Or, is this all happening in a single pass?
19. Is the market concerned that opposing parties are not processing data effectively enough produce adequate responses?
20. Is the market actually using the 26(f) conference to define how opposing parties are going to produce responsive data?
21. How is the market handling privileged ESI during this process?  What is the actual privileged information is only part of an ESI data set?
22. Is the market still imaging ESI into TIFF and PDF for Review and final production?
23. How do bates numbers fit into this process?
24. How is the market integrating paper data into this process?
25. How is the market handling complex coding?
26. Is the market still using in house legacy client/server solutions for the most part to complete the various pieces of the EDD process?
27. What does the market think about the new generation of SaaS based EDD solutions?
28. Are there any single source end-to-end solutions?
29. Are there any integrated end-to-end solutions?
30. Is the market concerned with chain of custody issues?
31. Have the courts ruled in any definitive way on any accepted way of processing EDD?
32. Has the cost of eDiscovery gone down or gone up over the past six (6) months?  And, if it has gone down, why?
33. Do corporate IT departments want control over the EDD process?  And, is that the right place for it to reside?

Answering these questions and the ones that these questions will prompt is certainly not going to fill in the chasm between the current best practices and standards as put forth by the experts and the rest of us mere mortals in the litigation market.  However, it might begin to provide the market with some real world examples of what works and what doesn't work.
I encourage everyone who has input to any one of these questions to respond.  And then , stay tuned for an update in a couple of weeks.

Labels: Autonomy, Best Practices, Clearwell, EDD, eDiscovery, EDRM, EDRM XML, IPRO, Kazeon, The Sedona Conference, Workflow

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:49 PM 1 Comments

The Cost of eDiscovery

As we approach the two(2) year anniversary of the December 2006 changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), it has been interesting and somewhat educational to follow the tremendous confusion and the dramatic changes in the cost of processing Electronically Stored Information (ESI). As I have been claiming, the changes to the FRCP and the subsequent requirements to utilize new technology to meet these changes, is a classical example of a market paradigm shift causing chaos and therefore the opportunity for the free market system to run wild. And, as George Socha and Tom Gelbmann report in the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Survey, commercial expenditures on Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) topped $2.7 billion in 2007 , up 43 percent from 2006, and that they predict that they will grow by 21 percent, 20 percent and 15 percent in 2008, 2009 and 2010 which equates to a $4.5 billion market at the end of 2010. As a point of comparison, Gartner Says "Worldwide IT Spending On Pace to Surpass $3.4 Trillion in 2008".

Standard EDD Fees
In a traditional electronic data discovery (EDD) project, costs break down along the following lines: (1) The cost of collecting data; (2) the cost of processing data from its native format into a format that can be loaded into an electronic document review system, and: (3) the cost of reviewing the data. Please note that according to the Fourth Annual Fulbright Litigation Trends Survey, document review accounted for 30 to 50 percent of all litigation costs. So, the current trend is to reduce the amount of data that has to be reviewed and to also reduce the actual review costs.

Manual Data Collection and Computer Forensics: The cost of manually collecting data and performing computer forensics is billed at an hourly rate plus expenses. In 2007, rates ranges from $350 - $750 per hour and have dropped to $250-$500 per hour or even lower depending upon the complexity of the project.

EDD Processing: EDD Processing or what is more commonly known as electronic data discovery (EDD) includes loading the data onto an EDD platform, extracting and "flattening" attachments and embedded files, converting the data to a readable format, reducing the volume of the data by culling it down based upon key word filters, de-duping and then creating a load file to enable the data to be loaded into an electronic review software. In 2007 EED processing costs were $1,500 - $2,000 per Gigabyte (GB) and have dropped to less than $1,500 per GB depending upon whether or not the clients request key word filtering, de-duplication or other specialized processing. In addition, in the last six (6) months, some service providers and vendors are charging less than $1,000 per GB for what they are calling "quick peek" EDD processing which is nothing more than flattening and converting the Electronically Stored Information (ESI) into a format that can be read by one of the electronic document review platforms.

Manual Document Review: Document Review is the "time honored" ritual of paying a lawyer or paralegal and hourly rate to literally review every document associated with a matter to determine pertinence, privilege and responsiveness. In 2007, if done manually in the United States by a licensed lawyer, hourly rates for review ranged from $250-$500 per hour or higher. However, in response to the markets demand to reduce the cost of review, many of the larger US based law firms are setting up off-shore operations in India and Malaysia to take advantage of the lower cost of labor and there are also now several third party off-shore document review organizations that are putting downward pressure on hourly fees with rates as low at $35 per hour. In addition, there are now several software solutions that contend that they can supplement human document review to even further reduce the costs.

Recently, several service providers, law firms and other interested third parties have introduced the concept of per-unit pricing for document review as opposed to the conventionally accepted billable hour. So, as with any market going through a paradigm shift, creative people will step in to fill a demand or void. Brett Burney does an excellent job of outlining some of the current trends in reducing the cost of document review in a June 23, 2008 article on the Law.com site, titled "Subdue the Costs of Document Review".

Document Review Platforms: There are several very poplar legacy client/server document review platforms such as Concordance and Summation and several newer Online Review Tools (ORT) such as iConect, RingTail, ImageDepot and Lexbe. The costs to host data on these platforms runs about $50 per Gigabyte (GB) with $100 - $200 per GB setup and load fees. However, several of the new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based ORT's such as ImageDepot, have recently run promotions to offer hosting and review of unlimited amounts of data for $1 per month for 5 months with a twelve (12) month commitment.

In keeping with the standard dynamics of new technology being introduced into a market in a paradigm shift, these newer ORTs are using SaaS technology that is very scalable and very inexpensive to run and can actually make an acceptable margin at these lower prices. It will be interesting to watch how the legacy vendors respond. The new lower price points will force them to either develop their own SaaS based tools, acquire one of the newer SaaS based tools or go out of business.

Solutions that Reduce the Amount of ESI
As stated, the easiest way to reduce the overall cost of EDD is to reduce the amount of data as early in the process as possible. Not surprisingly, several advanced technology vendors have emerged to fill this demand, including Clearwell Systems and Kazeon.

Clearwell Systems: Clearwell System's E-Discovery Platform, for instance, is an appliance-based system that identifies duplicate email and document attachments. It filters email according to domain, sender and receiver to further winnow the amount of data that needs to be reviewed. Beyond that, it handles reporting and hosting (in your client's data center, of course) and offers privacy controls.
Standard pricing for Clearwell Intelligence Platform is $65,000 per 100 GB of managed data. Compared with processing fees of about $1,500 per gigabyte of data, Clearwell Intelligence Platform costs clients about $650 per gigabyte to reduce the data required for review. By reducing the amount of data to be reviewed (which, again, is more expensive per gigabyte than the processing work), companies can realize significant savings -- a minimum of $200,000 per 100 GB, assuming 1% is actually reviewed.

Kazeon: Kazeon contends that they revolutionizes the way companies perform eDiscovery by using the Kazeon Information Access Platform software to intelligently discover, search & index, classify and act on electronically stored information. Kazeon provides a full spectrum of proactive and reactive eDiscovery solutions in response to litigation, information security and privacy, corporate investigations, regulatory compliance and storage consolidation requirements. The Kazeon Information Server software automates eDiscovery functions from identification, collection through processing, preservation, analysis and review for corporations, service providers, and law firms. Through the development of unique search & indexing, analysis and workflow automation technology, Kazeon has been recognized by various industry forums, including Gartner's eDiscovery MarketScope and the recent Socha-Gelbmann eDiscovery Survey 2008 where Kazeon was recognized as a Top 5 eDiscovery Software Provider. Kazeon has established partnerships with leading companies, including Fujitsu, Siemens, Google, Network Appliance, Oracle and Symantec.

Kazeon's Claim of $4.30 per GB Processing Costs Stirs Up the Industry
On May 6, 2008, in a press releases announcing that Attenex and Kazeon have formed an eDiscovery Alliance, the real news was buried in the boilerplate as Kazeon contended that they could process a Gigabyte (GB) of data for $4.30. This was actually not new news as they had previously contended in a press release titled "ESG Lab Finds Kazeon’s Information Server Delivers Fast and Cost Effective Information Access" this same financial offering in a slightly less alarming way by stating that the ESG Lab verified impressive price/performance with a single Kazeon Information Server appliance able to index 2,500 documents per dollar and a cost as low as $4,300 dollars per terabyte (which is approximately $4.19 per gigabyte).
However, even in the face of the overwhelming Blog posting response from the industry about this claim being completely misleading, Kazeon has not removed the claim from subsequent press releases and in fact has embraced the claim as the center piece of their marketing message. The best and most thoughtful response came from a posting on the eDiscovery 2.0 Blog by Kurt Leafstrand on May 6th, 2008 titled "eDiscovery Processing: You Get What You Pay For". Given the fact that the eDiscovery 2.0 Blog is written and sponsored by Clearwell Systems, a another player in the eDiscovery space, it may be a bit biased. However, Kurt did a great job of listing the various critical and required processing components that need to be considered when comparing the overall cost of Electronic Data Discovery (EDD).

Example of the Cost of an EDD Project (Using Standard Technology)
Given all of the above as a general foundation for the fees associated with an EDD project, following is an example project:
Parameters and Assumptions

1. Two (2) US based corporations
2. Two (2) Sites for ESI Collections
3. Approximately two (2) terabytes (TB) of data (all native ESI)
4. 2X expansion of ESI during the initial flattening and extraction of attachments and embedded data
5. 50% reduction during initial processing with key word filtering and de-duplication
6. Document Review required at multiple locations
7. Time from matter filing date to completion is estimated to be 3 years.
8. Onshore legal review at 300 pages per hour

Collection Costs
Collection of the data along with computer forensics work, travel expense, storage hardware and hourly rates is as follows;
Collection Fees = 10 hours x $300/hour = $3,000
Storage Hardware = $2,000
Travel Costs = $2,500
Computer Forensic Fees = 10 hours x $300/hour = $3,000

Total Collection Costs = $10,500

Initial Processing Costs (Flattening, Culling, De-duping)
4 TB of Data x $1,000/ GB = $4M (Reduced back down to 2 TB)

Hosting and Review Technology Costs
36 months of Hosting for 2 TB at $50/GB/Month = $3,600,000

Document Review
2 TB of data at 75,000 pages per GB = 150M pages
150M pages at 300 pages / hour = 500,000 hours at $150 / hour = $75M

Total Cost of Project
Collection = $10,500
Processing = $4M
Hosting = $3.6M
Review = $75M

Total Cost = $82,610,500

Alternative Approach
Obviously, $82M is cost prohibitive. So, where can we save from money? Following is an alternative approach:
Changed Assumptions

1. Use of new front-end processing technology
2. 90% reduction in data during culling and de-dupe
3. Use of off-shore review

Alternative Collection / Processing Costs
Although it may not be completely realistic, lets assume that both sites had technology to automatically gather, filter and de-dupe the data (e.g. Clearwell, Kazeon). And, there was no computer forensic work required. Therefore, the cost of processing 4 TB of data using the Kazeon model would be 4 TB x $4,300 / TB = $8,600 (reduction of data to 400 GB)

Alternative Hosing and Review Technology Costs
36 months of Hosting for 400 GB at $50/GB/Month = $720,000

Document Review
400 GB of data at 75,000 pages per GB = 30M pages
30M pages at 300 pages / hour = 100,000 hours at $40 / hour = $4M

Total Cost of Project
Collection / Processing = $8,600
Hosting = $720,000
Review = $4M

Total Cost = $4,728,600

Conclusion
ESI reduction through culling and de-dupe is essential to reduce the amount of data that has to be hosted and reviewed along with reducing the cost of actual document review is the key to reducing the overall cost of EDD processing.

Labels: Clearwell, Consulting Fees, EDD, eDiscovery, Electronic Data Discovery, FRCP, Kazeon, Pricing, Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:49 AM 2 Comments

Another Round of eDiscovery Technology Enhancements as Vendors Stampede Towards Single Source Solutions

Although it is not the purpose of The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift to track litigation technology vendors and thier most recent releases, it appears that there has been a recent flurry of announcements regarding either the enhancement of early collection or the addition of further Early Case Assessment (ECA) analysis that futher enforce my contention that there is a variable vendor stampede towards single source solutions: eDiscovery Single Source Solutions.

This vendor stampede is great for end users in the short run as it appears that most of the more well know players in the litigation technology market are continuig to offer the missing components to bring their solutions up to the "single source" platform criteria.

However, in the long run as is always the case when market to through a paradigm shift and as we are now witnesses with the last days of NFL training camps, not everyone, not every vendor is going to make the cut. There is going to be consolidation, some complete failures and some near failures. And, in the long run this will be good for a stable mature eDiscovery markte. However, in the short run, even through end-users now have many "good" choices, they better consider other factors in choosing their vendors such as longevity.

In future posts to this Blog, I will offer some suggestions to end users to help them avoid choosing the wrong vendors.

August 2008 Vendor Announcements

Kazeon Extends eDiscovery Collection, Processing and Analysis with Legal Hold and Laptop/Desktop Product

Mountain View, Calif. - August 25, 2008 - Kazeon Systems, Inc., a leading provider of intelligent eDiscovery solutions, today announced the availability of Version 3.1 of its award-winning Information Server IS1200-ECS. The new version introduces a new in-place legal hold, KazHold™ and a new agent-less product for in-place analysis of and collection from laptops/desktops. These new products and functionality are key enhancements in helping organizations streamline their collection, analysis and processing for proactive and reactive eDiscovery processes and ensure that they discover all relevant and necessary information for any litigation related activity. These new capabilities provide extensive defensibility and audit ability for eDiscovery by ensuring no spoliation of data and no modifications to metadata attributes of files and emails, while saving significantly on network bandwidth and cost during the process of collection, processing and analysis. With Version 3.1 of its Information Server IS1200-ECS Kazeon continues to set the standard in addressing the most sophisticated eDiscovery requirements of organizations worldwide. The IS1200-ECS is now being used by hundreds of corporations worldwide, and has more than 50 billion documents and 3000 Terabytes under direct management.

FTI Announces Availability of Attenex® Patterns® 5.0

FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN), the global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance their enterprise value, today announced from the ILTA ’08 conference the availability of Attenex Patterns version 5.0. The release of Attenex Patterns 5.0 marks the first product announcement since FTI Consulting acquired Attenex in July 2008. The new eDiscovery software includes a number of significant enhancements to help corporate IT departments administer and enforce a repeatable in-house eDiscovery process.

“Attenex Patterns is the eDiscovery standard for many law firms and corporations because it puts them in the best position to make the best decision on any matter—whether for investigations, legal or compliance needs,” said JR Jesson, senior managing director of FTI Consulting. “Enhancements in Attenex Patterns 5.0 benefit corporate IT teams tasked with developing a defensible and cost-effective eDiscovery process.”

Among the new features within Attenex Patterns 5.0, the software development kit (SDK) enables corporate IT teams to automate eDiscovery processing tasks, reducing unnecessary expenses and the risk of human error. The software’s open APIs help corporate IT teams leverage existing investments by integrating Attenex Patterns with complementary applications and data sources. Additionally, corporate IT teams can develop integrated utilities for custom eDiscovery processing tasks.

The dramatic growth of enterprise data collected during litigation, internal investigations and regulatory inquiries creates new challenges for corporate eDiscovery teams. Attenex Patterns 5.0 helps the in-house team rise to this challenge by delivering several new performance enhancements for managing eDiscovery matters—whether multinational or multi-terabyte. These enhancements include improved data processing and search performance with Asian languages, faster processing speeds for multiple PST and NSF files, as well as faster de-duplication and re-clustering capabilities to help eDiscovery teams more quickly make sense of the data during internal investigations and case assessments.

Businesses have identified Attenex as a top five eDiscovery software provider for the second straight year in the most recent Socha-Gelbmann eDiscovery survey. A longtime market leader in document processing and analytics software for eDiscovery, Attenex Patterns software consists of:

Attenex® Patterns® Workbench™, enterprise-class data and project management software used by leading corporations to implement repeatable in-house eDiscovery processes. More than a culling tool or appliance, in-house eDiscovery teams rely on Workbench’s unprecedented flexibility for filtering collected data, developing case strategy as well as tracking document decisions and work product throughout the process; and Attenex® Patterns® Document Mapper™, the choice of legal and compliance teams that need to quickly and accurately identify relevant information from electronic document collections of any size. An unparalleled visual interface increases review productivity with a multi-dimensional look at the collection’s main concepts and themes. Reviewers can quickly and accurately identify, analyze, review and categorize documents during internal investigations or case assessments.

Attenex Patterns can be deployed on-premise or on-demand through an Attenex Advantage™ service provider, providing flexible deployment options that can be customized to the needs of any environment. This flexibility, combined with new features in version 5.0, further strengthens Attenex Patterns’ position as the premier eDiscovery software for corporations that want to take control of their eDiscovery process.

StoredIQ eDiscovery Appliance 4.6 Increases Functionality Leadership with Expanded Platform Support and Enhanced eDiscovery Features

Austin, TX. August 25, 2008 — StoredIQ, Inc., whose innovative eDiscovery technology revolutionizes the way companies address eDiscovery and litigation readiness, announced today expanded platform integration support and enhanced eDiscovery functionality designed to improve the efficiency of IT and legal teams performing work within the eDiscovery lifecycle.
"StoredIQ automates more of the eDiscovery lifecycle than any other solution," said Steve Killan, Enterprise Server Manager at James Hardie, the world leader in fiber cement technology. "StoredIQ delivers unparalleled functionality in both breadth and depth from information management through the identification, collection, preservation and processing of electronically stored information."

StoredIQ V4.6 includes:

- Expanded Platform Support
- Ability to insert unstructured information as records into the most current version of EMC Documentum and place those items under litigation hold
- Ability to insert, retrieve and manage information within Microsoft Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007
- Deeper eDiscovery Capabilities
- Improved query report analytics to assist with "meet-and-confer" sessions
Ability to harvest additional email server objects such as tasks, contacts, calendar items, and notes
- Support of the EDRM XML V1.0 load file format
- Enhanced usability and productivity for pre-collection investigations

Labels: Attenex, Documentum, Early Case Assessment, eCapture, EDRM, FTI, Kazeon, SharePoint, StoredIQ, XML

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:45 AM 0 Comments

Evidence Lifecycle Management

I had to the opportunity this past week to speak with Steve Liley, the Founder, President and CEO of WorkProducts and get an update on the current status of his Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) appliance. The discussion was prompted in part from my recent post titled, "eDiscovery Confounds Companies and Their Lawyers" and several other posts over the past month revolving around my recommendations for the enterprise to engage in pro-active eDiscovery.

I met Steve about a year ago and found him to have a very indepth understanding of the eDiscovery market with specific insight into pro-active eDiscovery. As such, I always enjoy our discussions/debates regarding the current state of the eDiscovery market.

Discussion Highlights
In our discussions this past, Steve indicated that his customers and ELM Ecosystem Partners are looking to the MatterSpace® Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) appliance for preservation management and case assessment/ESI delivery. This is because preservation management and case assessment are interwined with hold notices added/released based on case assessment, etc. Looking at this from the EDRM standpoint, this places MatterSpace® at the very beginning of the cycle if not earlier and places them in competition with other applicance vendors such as Kazeon and Mimosa Systems, litigation software providers such as Autonomy, and best of breed providers for litigation hold such a PSS Systems and Exterro.

He went on to further emphasize that another big reason for this is the WorkProducts business model, which is focused on MatterSpace® being much cheaper than one of the Top Prservation Software Provider (traditional software install for preservation mgt. = $500K+) with a small upfront subscription fee and per custodian crawl vs. a gigabyte model for collection/case assessment. This allows all size cases (3 custodian employment matters, etc.) to utilize MatterSpace® even when the stakes are small ($20K claim) as the user knows how much they are going to spend upfront.

Steve provided me with an example of a large company with 1,000 annual cases that has deployed MatterSpace® for just this reason. He contends that the per custodian crawl model scales up better than per gigabyte scales down for preservation management and case assessment.

We finished up our discussion by discussing the fact that facilitating eDiscovery services providers with behind a corporate firewall appliance that does preservation management & case assessment to then export data to service providers per gigabyte processing and review business models provides for a seamless client experience on all size litigation, scaling with each client’s case management needs.

My Conclusion
The proactive eDiscovery technology vendors hold the key to reducing the complexities and cost of "one-off" eDiscovery. As such, I believe that Steve and WorkProducts have a very bright future.

About WorkProducts
WorkProducts provides a leading Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) solution, the MatterSpace® Appliance, that speeds up matter-specific ESI delivery by a factor of ten - with improved quality - while dramatically reducing the risks and costs of ESI processing and legal review. MatterSpace is a secure, plug-and-play hardware and software appliance that quickly installs in a customer's network environment, integrating their eRecords systems with downstream eDiscovery products and services. MatterSpace "crawls" the enterprise network to identify, preserve, collect, index, and de-duplicate all accessible structured and unstructured electronically stored information (ESI) for all identified custodians and sources. This includes all enterprise accessible desktops, file shares, Exchange/Domino email, SharePoint, Symantec Enterprise Vault, ZANTAZ EAS, EMC Documentum, Open Text, etc. It also facilitates collaboration among all concerned parties and monitors and tracks all matter-specific ESI communications and events, including litigation holds.

Labels: Autonomy, EDRM, ELM, Evidence Lifecycle Management, Exterro, Kazeon, Mimosa Systems

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:55 AM 0 Comments

Kazeon Press Release Focuses Attention on the Cost of a Latte and the Falling Cost of eDiscovery

Like lots of other eDiscovery professionals this morning, I had to do a double take when I read the press release today from Kazeon announcing their new partnership with Attenex, titled, "Attenex and Kazeon Announce eDiscovery Alliance". The double take was caused by the fact that Kazeon announced that they can deliver industry-leading price/performance for in-house processing of ESI in preparation for reactive and proactive eDiscovery matters as low as $4.30 per Gigabyte. This is actually not new news as they had previously contended in a press release titled "ESG Lab Finds Kazeon’s Information Server Delivers Fast and Cost Effective Information Access" this same financial offering in a slightly less alarming way by stating that the ESG Lab verified impressive price/performance with a single Kazeon Information Server appliance able to index 2,500 documents per dollar and a cost as low as $4,300 dollars per terabyte (which is approximately $4.19 per gigabyte).

However, any way you crunch the numbers, position the cost or spin the offering, it is just flat alarming and bordering on unbelievable for both users and technology vendors in the eDiscovery market. Bottom line, whether or not you believe that Kazeon is comparing true eDiscovery apples with the rest of the apples in the market, it doesn't matter as this is definitely the first shot across the bow of the rest of the eDiscovery vendors. Prices are comming down and the rest of the market is going to have to keep up. Unfortunately, many of them have very old technology that requires lots of manual manipulation and processing and therefore may not have the "legs" to stay in the race. I don't see any dramatic changes in 2008 as users will still trying to figure out what they are getting for thier investments or not getting from each of the vendors. However, once this is all common knowledge, 2009 may be the year of the changing of the vendor guard in eDiscovery.

All of that being said, the best comments on this press release came from Kurt Leafstrand of Clearwell on his eDiscovery 2.0 Blog. The title of his posting is "eDiscovery Processing: You Get What You Pay For" and does a really great job of questioning whether or not Kazeon can really support even the minimum requirements of the EDRM processing node for what basically amounts to the less than the cost of my favorite Starbukcs venti, breve, sugar free hazlenut latte.

With all the talk of the cost of lattes, maybe the next big eDiscovery winner will be the vendor that announces a cross marketing deal with Starbucks to include a free venti latte with every GB of data procesed. Remember that you heard it first here on the eDiscovery Paradigm Shift Blog.

Because I beleive that it is one of the more humerous eDiscovery posts that I have read in some time, I am inlcuding the entire contents of Kurts Blog post below:

Anyone reading today’s announcement from Kazeon could be forgiven for doing a double-take: did someone misplace the decimal point? Kazeon claims that it can perform “processing of ESI in preparation for eDiscovery matters as low as $4.30 per Gigabyte.” Assuming that’s not simply a typo, it begs an obvious question: If Kazeon really can process information at a tiny fraction of what e-discovery service providers are charging, how come every e-discovery service provider isn’t going out of business? Why wouldn’t everyone take this incredibly good deal?
The answer (in press releases, as in politics) lies in definitions. Exactly what sort of processing would you be getting for your four dollars and change?

You’ll have to ask Kazeon to get the answer to that one, but give a venti latte to a bleary-eyed e-discovery service provider who’s just pulled an all-nighter preparing for a meet-and-confer, and they’ll tell you all about the nuances, complexities, and risks inherent in e-discovery processing that may be difficult for enterprise search/information lifecycle management vendors to grasp. Quite likely, they will refer you to EDRM’s processing node overview, which outlines the basic goals of robust processing:

1. Capture and preserve the body of electronic documents;
2. Associate document collections with particular users (custodians);
3. Capture and preserving the metadata associated with the electronic files within the collections;
4. Establish the parent-child relationship between the various source data files;
   Automate the identification and elimination of redundant, duplicate data with the given dataset;
5. Provide a means to programmatically suppress material that is not relevant to the review based on criteria such as keywords, date ranges or other available metadata;
6. Unprotect and reveal information within files; and Accomplish all of these goals in a manner that is both defensible with respect to clients’ legal obligations and appropriately cost-effective and expedient in the context of the matter.

And that’s just the high-level overview. After the caffeine from the latte starts to kick in, they’ll tell you it’s also absolutely critical to:

1. Provide statistical count tie-outs that reconcile every incoming email, loose file, and attachment with the processed document set
2. Automatically scan critical large container files (such as PSTs) for errors and problems prior to processing
3. Automatically perform custodian mapping to track ownership of all documents
   Maintain detailed reports on every anomaly encountered during processing, down to the individual email, loose file, and attachment
4. Automatically handle common metadata anomalies (with logging) so that the maximum number of documents are made available for review
5. Provide robust and thorough handling for container files regardless of container format
   Support non-email content types such as contacts, calendar entries, tasks, and notes
6. Robustly handle embedded objects
7. Provide full visibility into exceptions encountered during processing, along with an integrated exception handling process to allow repaired/decrypted data to be easily added back into the document set

All that for under five bucks? That’s quite a deal! But remember, if you drive by your corner gas station tomorrow morning and they’re advertising regular unleaded for 20 cents a gallon: It may be cheap, but it’s probably not gas you’re getting.

Labels: Clearwell, EDD, Electronic Data Discovery, Kazeon

posted by Charles Skamser @ 6:50 PM 1 Comments