Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Symantec will need to make further acquisitions to stay competitive in the e-discovery software market.
In order to restore the legal community’s confidence in information management e-discovery companies should start teaming up with bigger players in the field to boost their competitive advantage.
Last year, the popular computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard (HP) made an interesting move to acquire Autonomy, a company that develops search software in an effort to expand its cloud services and technology capabilities. Buying the UK company gave HP another strength in the information management market among its rivals IBM, Cisco and Oracle, according to reports.
The way companies manage their information has always been a problem. Whether they relate to security, privacy, compliance or legal issues, the risks surrounding information/record management can be a first class headache for businesses.
The last year has seen new trends in e-discovery and every day more governance professionals are starting to explore the benefits of having better efficiency and updated information at their fingertips. The demands for and evolution of e-discovery might reach their peak this year, so companies need to be ready for what is expected.
A report by e-discovery Journal Group, a technology research firm, reveals that companies don’t know how to manage the huge volumes of diverse types of electronic information.
The study also offers some e-discovery predictions for 2012:
Continued growth of the cloud for information governance and e-discovery, but at a slow burn: Compliance, legal, privacy, security and control issues will force some companies to stop and think carefully about this investment.
More Consolidation in the e-discovery market: HP made its big move to bring information governance into the fold with its 2011 acquisition of Autonomy. There are other large vendors like EMC and IBM that have e-discovery products in their portfolios, but others, like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and even Symantec, will need to make further acquisitions to become or stay competitive in the e-discovery software market.
Continued evolution from processing applications to ECA (early case assessment) to e-discovery platform: In 2012, more vendors than ever will be able to offer integrated platforms. Gone are the days when any organization will buy just a simple processing engine. Processing applications must evolve to add collection and preservation, analysis, review, and even some level of production, in order to provide compelling ECA.
Social media collection and preservation heats up: The use of social media tools such as Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn create collection and retention challenges that are new to the legal community.
The emergence of information management platforms: Large enterprises face huge challenges dealing with ‘big data’ (datasets that easily multiply and become a challenge to work with). Big data covers both structured and unstructured content (files stored in SharePoint). Companies need to leverage all information for strategic advantage while ensuring they know what they have, where it is, how to get it and what it means for e-discovery purposes.
Predictive coding goes mainstream: Many organizations experimented with predictive coding in 2011. Expect to see some interesting cases to emerge allowing legal professionals to feel more comfortable with the defensibility and accuracy of predictive coding.
