Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2010-04-23 05:55:41Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. As AIIM Expo comes to an end, I’m left feeling like the eDiscovery market is on the precipice of becoming a critical part of the information management market, but is not quite there just yet. There is an excitement and buzz about eDiscovery at the conference, but it is not quite yet a crescendo. Yes, there was an eDiscovery pavilion and we got to meet some cool vendors exhibiting there – Catalyst Repository Systems, El Fresko Technologies, iConect Development, Kroll Ontrack, and Planet Data Solutions. But, many of the mainstream eDiscovery vendors were not at the show at all, either as exhibitors or attendees. And, of the large software vendors present – EMC, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, eDiscovery was not an overtly featured capability at their booths. There was even a partner pavilion for Microsoft and the only partners talking about eDiscovery were archiving partners. As we’ve pointed out in other entries, there is a big opportunity for creating eDiscovery solutions for SharePoint; it’s a shame no one is getting out ahead of the curve on that.
Conspicuous by absence was Autonomy – a leading eDiscovery vendor with other information governance capabilities that play well with the AIIM audience. I wrote earlier this week that the AIIM crowd moves slowly into eDiscovery and it seems the same is true about the eDiscovery vendors catering to the AIIM membership. I believe the reason for this is multifold:
- The AIIM membership does not include legal decision-makers. At present, legal departments are still either buyers or major influencers in eDiscovery-related purchases; the big vendors don’t seem interested in investing too much in just influence IT and information managers.
- The economy has vendors limiting their exhibition spend. I asked why EMC didn’t have any SourceOne representatives and was told that they could only have so much booth space and didn’t want to push eDiscovery to a crowd that didn’t have budget for that area. But, they did have some collateral about SourceOne and related products (archiving, records management).
- Other shows – LegalTech, ILTA, and ARMA – are the focus for the vendors with eDiscovery offerings.
Next year, I think we’ll see more of an eDiscovery presence at the AIIM Expo. The information managers are getting more involved in eDiscovery. Organizations are getting moving on projects and, in many cases, the information managers are leading these projects. They will be more important influencers next year. As the money for eDiscovery projects flows, so too will the large vendors’ desire to influence the right people.