Historical Essays

In scanning through eDJ's syndication feed this morning, I came across an article about ProofPoint selecting ISYS's document filters for extraction of unstructured content in ProofPoint's email security, eDiscovery and compliance solutions. At first glance, this news seems to be of the "no big deal" variety. However, with the added context of two other nuggets of market news, this story may be an indicator of shifts in the market. One of the other nuggets is a big one - HP's planned acquisition of Autonomy; the other nugget is a small one and came through the rumor mill - that some of the early executives from the INSO document filters company (later acquired by Stellent, who in turn was acquired by Oracle) have joined ISYS.

Get used to “the cloud” playing a major role in eDiscovery. Whether organizations source cloud-based storage, EDD processing and hosted review, or application via software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery, the cloud is of interest to a large majority of consumers. While general market data shows that many information management professionals have concerns about SaaS and cloud-based services, the legal market – generally more conservative when it comes to cutting-edge technology – is a cloud pioneer.

The eDJ Group’s corporate consulting does not usually touch tactical matters. Most corporate clients already have good service provider relationships or we partner up with a local provider to keep our role clearly on the strategic requirements, goals, technology and workflow. Despite our best intentions, you sometimes have to jump into the fray when a client says jump. That was how I found myself once more elbow deep in batch scripts on a large preservation collection project with a looming deadline. Every time we tried to transfer executables, .BAT files or anything except normal MS Office files we ran into security system blocks. It quickly became apparent that even with administrator rights, we could not run or move the remote collection packages or scripts within their environment. I try sending zips via email. They never arrive. Next I dust of my FTP site and get everything uploaded. Their firewall blocks all FTP connections. Final resolution? We had to resort to a freemail account. Success!

Recent changes to Facebook promise to let friends share content more easily and to allow users to follow the lives of others through subscriptions. The more freely information flows, the better, right? Based on the way FaceBook and Twitter usage has grown, that would certainly seem to be the case. As we pointed out in our information governance webinar with ViaLumina, Ltd., one of the primary value propositions of IG is creating business value through better usage of information. The other side of the IG value coin is risk management; the free flow of information through social media presents real risks – both for corporations and individuals. More and more client inquiries focus on collection of social media content. FINRA is one regulatory body that has state that social media content must be treated like any other electronic content. To that end, many archiving vendors now have ways to capture Twitter feeds and store alongside emails and instant messages. Depending on how active a Twitter user the employee is, this could result in a lot of data flowing into the archive. With the increasing usage of social media, organizations are looking to get ahead of the curve in terms of collecting it.

It seems like there is always some kind of job movement in the eDiscovery marketplace. It seems I’m constantly getting updates on LinkedIn and Plaxo on the status of someone’s new role at a company. This last weekend’s batch of LinkedIn updates I received inspired me to write up a post on mentorship in the eDiscovery industry in the current job market.

EDJ is in the midst of creating a research report analyzing the HP acquisition of Autonomy (look for further details on that next week). There is a lot of negative market reaction to the premium that HP is paying (over 10x Autonomy’s revenues), but not a lot of attention being paid to the real issues. The latest example is the escalating war of words between Oracle and Autonomy. Oracle claims that Autonomy was shopped to them and they turned down the offer due to the high price; Autonomy denies the claim. Oracle then releases the Powerpoint presentation slides used in the Autonomy meeting as proof of the claim. While the industry can’t divert its eyes from this tabloid-like news, the real issues at the heart of the acquisition get ignored.