It has been a while since I caught up with my friend Joe Bartolo. Knovos has evolved from their service provider roots (Capital Novus) into a broad, diverse legal technology company. Despite Relativity’s dominance of the large matter review market, mid-market players like Knovos seem to be gaining traction with usable, focused products that meet specific customer requirements. eDiscovery functionality, performance and innovation can be applied to many adjacent market segments such as virtual deal rooms (Cryptacomm), strategy financial planning (Cascade) and broader information governance management (nayaEdge) solutions.
It fascinates me how customers will latch on to a narrow feature that solves a pain point. Joe and Mario Pintrucci (partner manager) covered a recent sale of their Cryptacomm platform to an AmLaw 100 firm who needed a white labeled secure communications solution for ALL of their external communications. You might posit that M365 or other enterprise information governance platforms can check those boxes. I would counter that the effort and tech talent required to implement, test and maintain these platforms frequently outweighs their ‘end to end’ value. A turnkey solution built for attorneys can be more attractive to senior partners who just want something they can use on day one. Besides, Cryptacomm also provides specialized contract analytics and review workflows for M&A data rooms that can be leveraged for many other usage scenarios.
The eDiscovery market space is complex and multi-faceted. I still field VC/investor inquiries asking, “But doesn’t Relativity dominate the market?” While Relativity may indeed dominate certain segments (such as large matter hosted review), players like Knovos, IPRO, Exterro and others seem to have gained traction with recent sales to government agencies, foreign based global corporations and SMB consumers. I see Relativity and Reveal as the Microsoft and Google of the eDiscovery market. There seems to be plenty of room for mid-tier competitors with specialized, priced-for-purpose, turn-key solutions.
The team covered a recent case study in which a foreign pharmaceutical corporation used the nayaEdge collection platform to preserve 20k custodians and consolidate 500+ key custodian collections into a manageable, single-instance repository. I was an early beta tester (2002) for Guidance’s EnCase Enterprise collection platform. Corporate and global internet bandwidth and infrastructure just could not support mass collections on this kind of scale. eDJ did a deep dive into the few successful Autonomy implementations we could find back in 2011 (during the HP acquisition). Every global financial referral customer had massive infrastructure and tech staffing investments to deliver the required global processing and connection speeds required. It is important to consider how rapidly evolving and improving corporate information management infrastructures can empower expanded legal technology scope and capabilities. Before you say “we cannot do that”, take the time to do some demo’s and make some reference calls with providers.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.
Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer a journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being published. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations.
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