Essays

The last few posts in my information governance (IG) series have focused on the growing acceptance that IG is a defined model for managing information that companies are currently executing on, the fact that IG encompasses both structured data and unstructured content, and the state of relative immaturity in overall IG practices. The survey data is presenting a good news / bad news scenario: there is some agreement on what IG is and the component practices within it (records management, eDiscovery, archiving &storage, security, compliance, privacy, etc), but seemingly not a ton of proactive IG initiatives. This is not uncommon in emerging markets where unique challenges exists, e.g. getting huge volumes of diverse types of electronic information under control.

There is a ton of interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based computing. Our industry relies on the cloud for both proactive information management (think hosted email archiving) and reactive eDiscovery services (think processing and hosted review). Attitudes toward SaaS and the cloud, though, have been hard to measure. There are camps that don’t trust the security of the cloud, just as there are camps that are quick to send data outside the four walls of the company and into the cheapest storage possible.

A year after the flooding, the ILTA rev-elation conference finally made it to the Gaylord Opryland Resort this week. I heard that member attendance hit 1500, but the increased provider presence raised the total attendees to almost 2500. As an acquaintance remarked, “The resort is like a casino, but all the slot machines have been replaced by plants.” Yes, it was that hard to find your way out. Luckily the conference and networking proved sufficiently distracting. The friendly atmosphere and grass-roots networking have always differentiated ILTA from the commercial bustle of Legal Tech. The exhibitor labyrinth was much larger than the last show in Las Vegas, which I have mixed feelings about. Overall, the mood was upbeat and almost everyone I queried has had a record year. Litigation and discovery readiness spending seems to have recovered from the 2008-2009 lull.

The market is buzzing about the HP acquisition of Autonomy. Any time there is a transaction for over $10 billion, people tend to stand up and take notice. HP is essentially betting the farm on the continued success of Autonomy. But, multiple sources have raised questions about the Autonomy business as it’s currently advertised. Leslie Owens at Forrester points out that Autonomy’s IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) is not a true information management platform; Alan Pelz-Sharpe of RealStory Group calls Autonomy’s OEM business into question. And, I’ve been flooded by anonymous sources that raise issues with the amount of revenue Autonomy is making in various business lines, specifically its OEM business. David Cahill goes so far as to say HP should pay the $117 million penalty to call off the deal. Thus, we are hoping to talk to all kinds of folks – Autonomy executives, HP executives, Autonomy OEM customers, Autonomy application customers, etc – about their experiences and perspectives. eDJ’s goal is to present a pragmatic go-forward plan for eDiscovery professionals and to list out what it might take for HP to make the Autonomy acquisition a successful one.

Now that I have had a couple days to digest my whirlwind of Nashville ILTA 2011 press briefings, I wanted to get you my impressions on the memorable highlights. My first impression was, “OMG everyone has an iPad!” Really. Given the amazing prevalence of the tablets in the audiences of my sessions, I was not surprised that Recommind has just released an optimized mobile interface for their Axcelerate product. Howard Sklar (Recommind) says that they wanted to get ahead of the blurring the line between personal and professional lives. The service providers seem to be feeling the pressure from corporations to mitigate rollercoaster discovery costs with fixed fee and managed service offerings. Just as legal hold features were the hot add-on at LTNY in February, flexible work flows seemed to be the hot feature as providers are gearing up for the end of year release cycle.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2011-09-08 11:17:25  There is a lot of analysis underway on the data from our information governance survey in preparation for the Sept. 15 webinar at 1pm ET / 10am PT. While the survey data shows consensus on the fact that IG is a defined model for managing information, encompasses many components (records management, storage and archiving, compliance, [...]

A recent client discussion reminded me of my earliest attempts at rule based categorization and the hard lessons of that experiment. Back in 2000, my general counsel (GC) asked if it was possible to find and segregate all potentially privileged emails out of the hundreds of millions that we had to produce to many different parties. I took a couple hundred thousand email and spent a week crafting search criteria/rules and doing iterative sampling checks. I worked with our top paralegals and our long standing firms to incorporate everyone’s input. I segregated approximately 18% of that collection as potentially privileged and put the remainder in the review queue without telling my contract attorneys that it had been cleansed. I felt pretty good about the exercise and knew that my rules were overly inclusive, but the point was to determine the risk of privilege waiver if we gave all the regulators remote access to the ‘cleansed’ master collection while my review teams worked on the 15-18% at issue. In the middle of the review, my GC ‘volunteered’ to man a review station for a couple hours to see for himself how it worked. After all, it was his question that kicked off this experiment. What do you think that he found?

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!