Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2015-10-12 20:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
Expect a barrage of press release headlines claiming triumph from Gartner’s new “Critical Capabilities for E-Discovery Software” ranking report. FTI is happy to furnish you a copy in exchange for your contact info rather than pay the $1,995 list price. The eDiscovery market has always been too broad to be realistically covered in one ‘Magic Diagram’ by either of the traditional analyst firms. That is why eDJ Group decided to focus on detailed market analysis of actual buying categories instead of over-simplified scatter graphs from the earliest days. Gartner’s new report ranks qualified providers (read analyst clients) in three eDiscovery usage cases by different weightings of rankings in six ‘critical capabilities’. Surprisingly, Gartner has actually published the raw and calculated scores along with the provider qualification criteria. My time as a ‘market analyst’ made me a serious skeptic of most analyst reports and ranking diagrams. It is nice to see a big firm make small steps towards the ideal of transparent, granular analysis aligned with consumer purchasing requirements. Despite the flood of numbers in the report, there is no way to translate IBM’s ‘Outstanding’ score of 4.6 for ECA, Predictive Coding or TAR to actual product functionality in Atlas or StoreIQ. I see this report as a brilliant way to repackage a part of the Magic Quadrant research that can be resold to 18+ winners. In fact, almost any of the 20 participating providers can create a custom usage case based on their own capability weightings that accentuates their best scores for a good marketing blurb as long as they pay the licensing fees. Why didn’t we come up with this when eDJ Group was focuses on market research? It is a smart way to make money. Really does make me glad that Mikki and I are back to pure consulting. Now I get to look forward to wrestling with eager CIO’s who think that ZyLAB, HP and FTI can meet all of the typical corporate legal department’s eDiscovery requirements because they are top ranked in the ‘Complete EDRM E-Discovery’ usage case. I am not criticizing the product suites, just saying that each of these finalists cover VERY different market segments. So download and be a critical reader who can winnow the wheat from the chaff.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a ‘Good Karma’ call. His active research topics include analytics, mobile device discovery, the discovery impact of the cloud, Microsoft’s Office 365/2013 eDiscovery Center and multi-matter discovery. Recent consulting engagements include managing preservation during enterprise migrations, legacy tape eliminations, retention enablement and many more.
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