Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2011-02-14 07:55:13Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. We did a lot of roadmap briefings in New York. This should wrap up the companies that I felt had something interesting to present.
Wave software recently acquired the solo product, iFramework, to add legal hold notices and matter workflow to Trident. The new Wave Software Solution platform should be able to better manage and synchronize multiple sites. Wave is in line with the hold management trend that emerged at the show for platforms looking to add easy functionality. AccessData and Guidance are examples of collection platforms that have added legal hold notices to their latest releases. Returning to Wave, they continue to sell primarily to firms, but say that they are starting to make consistent sales growth to corporations. Wave is betting on the decline of Tiffs and is ‘staying native’ for the time being.
As mentioned above, AccessData continues to push toward integration of their eDiscovery platform with AD Summation. They already have first pass review or ECA functionality in the AD eDiscovery system, but are going for a true platform that supports the lifecycle from the wild through final production. The development team has kept up fast release schedule and managed to add a large number of user driven features in a short time. The current platform now has a custodian data map, mature processing and Tiff conversion features intended to replace the LAW PreDiscovery stage with a real workflow. We will be watching AD’s integration efforts for all the Summation users.
LexisNexis is pushing LAW PreDiscovery and Concordance to the cloud. I am guessing that explains why neither software has had a full point release in years. Surprisingly, the LexisNexis booth felt like it had little focus on eDiscovery. The primary messaging was on all of their new practice management and legal research SaaS offerings. I can see how integrating the functionality of LAW and Concordance into a web based Early Data Assessment (their name) platform would bring these venerable products more in line with their overall offerings. The main problem that I see with eDiscovery in the cloud is overcoming the upload bandwidth choke. LexisNexis intends to use a distributed FTP loader system, but that still does not address the pipe issue for a small firm or corporation when they suddenly have more than 5 GBs of ESI to upload.
Reveal inControl 3.0 is a relatively new browser based review platform with some production and project management functionality. It is available on a subscription license and looks to be going after the same sweet spot in the market as Relativity.
I caught a couple minutes with the Planet Data executive team. They see a rapidly escalating risk in the evolving ESI formats, especially in the new Office multi-part XML formats. They have been investing heavily to handle these complex data types on their Exego platform while a lot of the market seems to be content to pretend that search is an ‘Easy Button’ function.
My last product is a new SaaS review platform offering called Infology from South Africa. They are just entering the U.S. market and intend to bring ‘disruptive’ volume based pricing to enable the small firm or company to get access to a full featured review platform. The system also offers a contracts management module and a simplified deal room version. I wish them better luck than we saw from Sfile’s flat $100/GB/Year offering from LTNY 2010.