eDJ Group

RelativityOne –SaaS Relativity on the Horizon

05 - 03 - 2016

Greg Buckles

At LTNY several providers asked me cryptic questions and dropped ‘rumors’ that kCura was going to ‘pull a Clearwell’ by undercutting their channel partners. Although I am now out of the market analyst biz, it taught me to always check the source when I smelled smoke. Sometimes you find a house on fire. Sometimes you find the BBQ party. The kCura team made all the right noises about their commitment to a healthy, happy channel and I don’t publish unsubstantiated rumors. At the kCura Spring Roadshow today, Andrew Sieja announced upcoming availability of RelativityOne, a SaaS version of the platform that was unveiled to partners at LTNY. The licensing options and details have yet to be disclosed, but I can see why any service provider who was already struggling with our quickly evolving market would get nervous when his customers could potentially host cases directly with kCura. What do I think:

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SaaS-Cloud Offerings

Ipro Innovations 2016 eDJ Take Aways

05 - 02 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Innovations 2016 was the best attended (450+) Ipro user conference to date. The addition of the Sedona Conference CLE sessions expanded the educational content. Overall, CEO Kim Taylor continues the slow conversion of diverse Ipro products into a centralized eDiscovery platform. If you have not kept up with the evolution, you can now buy the ADD processing thru production from Ipro channel providers, on-premise software and cloud IaaS. Last year, Ipro’s automated workflow and integration with Relativity took center stage. kCura’s recent acquisition of Content Analyst has forced Ipro to consider other analytics engines to power Eclipse visualizations and TAR. Healthy competition is good for our clients and the industry as a whole, so I will be interested to see which analytics engine starts to displace CAAT OEM customers. Below are my ad hoc notes from the keynotes and various sessions:

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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Matter Management
Analytics
Office 365 Collection
Mobile Device Discovery
EDD Services
Markets

If You Ask for Plutonium…

04 - 27 - 2016

Greg Buckles

So the complete quote from David C. Shonka, acting FTC GC, goes something like, “If you are going to ask for plutonium, don’t tell me that you cannot afford the containment system.” To be clear, all of Mr. Shonka’s remarks during the Sedona Conference session tracks at Ipro Innovations were made on his own behalf and not FTC policy. This particularly fabulous quote was in response to my question about the burden of effective security on solo or small firm plaintiffs for large electronic productions containing personal or confidential information. My take away is that proportionality, reasonableness and other factors do not waive counsel’s primary ethical responsibility to safeguard their client’s data or opposing productions. In the days of bates stamped boxes of paper, law offices and providers with man-trap hallways gave clients the illusion of security. Cloud email, mobile review, BYOD and demands for instant online access to massive ESI collections require a more formal diligence to secure and transport ESI. No wonder that some eDiscovery providers have begun to add security consulting and breach response to their offerings. The bottom line is if you ask for it, you have to be ready to provide reasonable protection for your ESI. More conference notes and perspectives after I have done my session on eDiscovery market trends.

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Practice Management

eDiscovery Relevant AI Acquisitions

04 - 20 - 2016

Greg Buckles

One of my favorite independent search market analysts (Stephen E. Arnold) found a blog by CB Insights Research listing recent Artificial Intelligence start-ups acquired by our favorite tech giants. Perfect timing for my presentation on 2016 eDiscovery Market Trends for Ipro Innovations next week. Only Nexidia’s $135M acquisition came directly from the eDiscovery market. Many of the acquisition targets specialized in analysis of images, video, social media or voice content. I have marked all of those with Natural Language Processing (NLP) or predictive analytics (i.e. more relevant to eDiscovery providers shopping for a CAAT alternative) on CB Insights timeline. I have to say that it is nice to see a market analyst company with an approachable pricing/content model.

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Analytic Engine

EDna Challenge Take Two

04 - 18 - 2016

Greg Buckles

I was glad to see my friend Craig Ball update his EDna Challenge on Friday. For faithful readers that missed the original small scale eDiscovery for Everybody scenario published almost seven years ago, it consisted of 50,000 mixed native electronic documents, scanned images and a $1,000 budget. Craig has raised the bar to 100,000 files occupying 12 GB for $5,000. The renewed challenge coincides with a recent RFP engagement that started as a small volume proactive ECA usage case that I shopped to 19 providers. You might say that I have a good viewpoint on small matter eDiscovery solution options, whether on-premise, hosted or SaaS. The primary difference between the new EDna scenario and my client’s requirements is the potential duration. The mythical Edna only has 90 days to review and produce, whereas my typical clients expect to need live access to collections for at least three years. In my opinion, it is the outdated and unreasonable monthly hosting charges that put eDiscovery out of reach for the majority of the SMB market. We (Mikki and myself) have always considered RFP pricing and specific bids to be confidential, so without explicit permission from my recent bidders I will keep my analysis more general. So what portion of RFP respondents could have met the EDna Challenge? The answer may surprise you.

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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
EDD Services
Review Platform

So Who Is Buying eDiscovery Customers?

04 - 14 - 2016

Greg Buckles

I got a bit side tracked while preparing my deck on 2016 eDiscovery Trends for the upcoming Ipro Innovations. I wanted a good graphic to visualize the customer buying frenzy happening as the service providers consolidate into global powerhouses and niche concierge shops. I maintain spreadsheets tracking eDiscovery/IG M&A activity (based on Rob Robinson’s excellent Complex Discovery list, the Fenwick M&A and my own search engines). So the question was which of the global service providers has acquired the most pieces of the eDiscovery market pie? In the last year, DTI definitely leads the pack with publicly disclosed acquisitions, but if you look back to my earliest market data (2010), Huron consistently absorbed small consulting shops for their talent until it was eaten by Consilio last year. So enjoy the graphic below and I hope to see you in sunny Phoenix later this month for a fun session.

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Markets

2016 eDiscovery Buyer Priorities Survey Results

04 - 12 - 2016

Greg Buckles

My thanks to all of our participating members who have taken surveys and supported our ongoing efforts to keep up with our dynamic market. I have closed the three question survey on eDiscovery buyer priorities and published the raw survey results. If you have not taken a survey recently, you can get immediate access by taking my new 2016 Multi-matter eDiscovery survey to upgrade your account to participating member for premium access. A couple fast comments on the survey results:

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Markets
Purchase Method

Are You Hiding in an eDiscovery Fox Hole?

04 - 07 - 2016

Greg Buckles

It has been a busy week of RFP demos and meetings. Yes, I will try to write up my impressions on the finalist demos, but only after the client has a decision. Two things happened yesterday that got me thinking about how easy it is to get technology tunnel vision while dealing with critical cases or clients. A very sharp exec told me something along the lines of, “I don’t know how you keep up with the latest tech. A RFP is outdated before it is filled out.” Classic fox hole syndrome for eDiscovery professionals who are constantly under assault in high pressure cases. They literally do not have the bandwidth to poke their heads out of their safe place and evaluate new offerings on a regular basis. I lived in that same fox hole during my days in the corporate hot seat. As a consultant I have to devote serious time to reading press releases, briefing with providers and conducting my own market research to keep up with the changes. This kind of time is not practical for most lit support managers in Fortune 1000 corporations or AmLaw 200 firms. They are just too busy. This syndrome afflicts providers as well. Sales reps MUST believe in their offerings to be effective. Providers have limited direct contact with competitor products and generally only hear about competitor services when something has gone wrong.

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Markets

Babs Deacon Named Venio CMO & VP

04 - 07 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Fast congratulations on Babs Deacon being named Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Training & Education for Venio Systems. It is always nice to see former eDJ co-workers and partners doing well in the world.

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Markets

Ipro Innovations 2016 – See You There?

04 - 04 - 2016

Greg Buckles

If you can get to the ipro Innovations 2016 conference in Phoenix later this month, I will be doing a session on key eDiscovery trends on the 27th. This is one of my favorite user conferences and a great excuse for me to socialize while visiting great clients based in Phoenix. Unlike LTNY and others, admission to the sessions and social events are free. For CLE hungry attorneys out there, ipro has teamed up with the Sedona Conference to present a number of CLE-eligible sessions by several excellent speakers such as M. James Daley, David Shonka and Ken Withers.

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Markets

Want to Know How the FBI Unlocked the iPhone?

03 - 30 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Well, so did I in my last post. Thanks to a friend, I can at least give you a method that a forensics provider could have used to determine the 4-6 digit pass code on that phone. It is not pretty or elegant, but it is a practical solution with the right infrastructure. We all know that the forensic image of the phone will wipe itself if you put in the wrong passcode 10 times. The first five tries can be made without delay and tries 6-10 have increasing wait times up to 60 minutes. They could just make LOTS of copies of the iPhone image and make 6 attempts on each before deleting that image and moving to the next. With enterprise class storage, connectivity, virtual machines and some scripting software it would just take time to run through the 1,000-10,000 code combinations. If you think that making copies of the large forensic image would be impractical, a 64 GB file should take roughly 93 seconds on a SATA III drive pushing 6 Gbit/s. This kind of brute force hack takes resources, time and a certain level of scripting expertise, but it only works if the phone has not deleted the encryption keys already. This method is burdensome enough to put it outside the normal proportionality/reasonableness limits in typical civil discovery. It requires either a very long time or the resources of a global service provider/governmental actor. This reinforces the need for proper mobile device termination/upgrade policies and procedures to protect sensitive data when devices leave the company.

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Mobile Device Discovery

Can Cellebrite Hack the iPhone?

03 - 24 - 2016

Greg Buckles

No, I don’t have any secret inside information confirming the Israeli newspaper report that Israeli based Cellebrite is the unnamed third party that is attempting to help the FBI crack one of the San Bernardino terrorists locked iPhones. So unless one of my unnamed, anonymous forensic friends has some insight to share, I will limit my speculations to the potential impact in civil discovery. So why do we care if the Cellebrite and the FBI publicly access an encrypted, locked current generation smart phone? Corporations with proper ActiveSync policies, MDM or MAM software already have the ability to force an administrative password reset or remotely wipe the device. Up until this point, counsel could only access encrypted BYOD devices that were either unlocked by the owner or had been altered to grant access (when the user first connected to corporate email). Furthermore, corporations were not concerned with upgraded/outdated devices as long as protocols were followed to wipe the old devices. Depending on what the proposed hack is, if it can bypass the stored encryption keys to access the device, we may have a problem.

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Mobile Device Discovery

SaaS-Cloud Offerings Category Added to eDJ Matrix

03 - 21 - 2016

Greg Buckles

A recent RFP engagement reminded me how useful it is to be able to find SaaS-Cloud offerings without having to use the filters on my eDJ Matrix. So I created a new category for tech offerings that have a SaaS-Cloud purchase option. I am still updating listings for the new Online Purchase feature, but hope that providers will update their listings before I catch up.

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Purchase Method

Your eDiscovery ROI, Fact or Fiction?

03 - 21 - 2016

Greg Buckles

My headline may be a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, but it is founded in years of creating ROI calculators for both clients and providers. Sales reps and marketing execs have run amuck with all too many of my well-intentioned spreadsheets in their quest to secure capex budget for their products or services. “If you don’t buy EasyButtonDiscovery, Greg says that you will go broke in 5 years!” Not going to happen*. You are talking about Return on Investment (ROI) because someone has identified the cost of eDiscovery as a problem already. Mikki and I tend to get called in when a company has recently tried to respond to a savvy regulator, prosecutor or plaintiff who ‘rocked the boat’ by asking hard questions about their preservation and collection scoping process (or lack thereof). Suddenly doing eDiscovery ‘right’ when you have been coasting on pre-FRCP methods is expensive. You are already behind the eight ball with the requesting party that caught you with your procedural pants around your ankles. Now you may have to go beyond the standard of reasonable care to appease a distrustful magistrate.

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Markets

Did kCura Just Buy the eDiscovery Market?

03 - 14 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Last Friday kCura acquired the Content Analyst Company for an undisclosed amount. The CAAT® OEM analytic engine provides deduplication, email threading, clustering and other analytic visualizations for the majority of eDiscovery review and ECA platforms in the Market. kCura’s Relativity already dominates the hosted review market segment and most of their competition has CAAT powering their analytic functions. Are we going to see “iConect powered by kCura” branding? I doubt it. I am betting that the kCura team made a smart ‘cheaper to buy than rent’ analysis of the CAAT licensing fees derived from Relativity. It reminds me of the FTI acquisition of Attenex. Will kCura immediately leverage CAAT licenses against their competitors?

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Analytic Engine
Analytics
Review Platform

eDJ Brief: ESI Laboratry – Production Analyzer

03 - 09 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Good sales and PR reps know have a patient persistence that pays off. I try to respond to briefing requests, even when they are outside of my current research or client focus. Identification and analysis of production sets is generally at the wrong end of the discovery lifecycle for our corporate clients. ESI’s lab’s marketing rep put up with being put off through the hectic pre/post LTNY weeks and earned a briefing for his client. In this age of cloud platforms and corporate ‘everything-in-one’ document management multitasking systems, the Production Analyzer is a throwback to old school single purpose software. You point it at an incoming or outgoing TIFF-text production set and it gives you a report that flags all the redactions; black box, text overlay or hybrid. My eDJ Matrix shows at least 14 unique offerings with automated redaction features developed to address increasing concerns over PII and cross border privacy mandates. Some of them have good logs to track redactions, but none of them that I have demo’d enable you to compare across production sets or versions of documents. Here are my briefing notes:

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Analytic Engine

Why Blind RFI? Because Providers Can’t Follow Instructions

03 - 01 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Have you conducted an eDiscovery RFI/RFP exercise? Did your phone blow up for days as persistent sales reps had ‘just a couple questions’? Did you throw your hands up in despair as the responses trickled in bearing little resemblance to what you asked for? Sending out a RFI/RFP is like ringing the dinner bell while standing in a pack of hungry hounds. You can’t blame them for wanting any scrap of inside information that might give their response an advantage. You can blame them for not reading instructions or the customer requirements. As you might guess, I am in the middle of another RFP engagement and I want to share some of the lessons learned.

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Markets

Where Should Your eDiscovery Live?

02 - 22 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Ever have meeting deja vu? That realization that you are asking the same questions and delivering the same advice over and over again? That feeling drives me to write in hopes that my next client will have read my blog and we can skip the rinse and repeat cycle. Several recent engagements have kicked off with overviews on the three primary ways that eDiscovery processing, review and analytics can be consumed. On-premise software – Classic purchase/lease that is installed on your servers and you administrate/run the software. Hosted Repository – A service provider processes, loads and manages your collections within their private data center. You are generally paying per GB plus optional services. SaaS Cloud – The newest option where you create an online account, upload/ship your data and generally administrate/run the review with minimal tech support. Each of these solution approaches has wildly differing pros, cons, costs, risks, required skills and more factors to consider. Some software (such as kCura’s Relativity) can be consumed via all three approaches. Others (such as Logikcull) are a pure SaaS Cloud offering. My point here is to do your homework before you start asking your favorite donut provider to send you a bid for taking control of your matters. Write down your usage cases and relevant requirements. Know your needs and your limits. Get input from outside counsel without letting them dictate the results. Some questions to consider before starting:

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Corporate Matter Management
Corporate eDiscovery Platform

LTNY 2016 Perspectives

02 - 08 - 2016

Greg Buckles

Legal Tech 2016 certainly had a lot to say about the state of the eDiscovery marketplace. Back in December I sampled the sponsor/exhibitor pages to see how this year stacked up against prior years. Although the conference picked up one sponsor and twenty exhibitors in the final 45 days, The LTNY event demonstrates the provider consolidation trend that has seen more acquisition/investment capital in the last 12 months than the prior 12 years. For an industry supposedly becoming mainstream and integrating with the traditional technology powerhouses, only the newly rebranded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) went for the full sponsorship route. All of the other track sponsors, keynote providers, etc. came from pure play eDiscovery providers such as FTI, Nuix, LexisNexis and others. Ad hoc counts of badge colors at various times gave me a rough 3-to-1 ratio of vendors to consumers in the exhibit maze or landings. All of this is purely anecdotal because ALM has not released actual attendance counts or rations since 2008 that I can find. To me, LTNY is our biz dev/career fair/trade show, even if some marketers dress it up in CLE clothing. I had a good time in the unexpectedly warm weather. Here are some of my briefing notes and event impressions:

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Analytic Engine
Analytic Processing
EDD Services

2016 Mobile Discovery Survey Results

01 - 25 - 2016

Greg Buckles

If you missed it, I wanted to call your attention to the raw survey results for my 2016 survey on mobile device discovery. If you registered via LinkedIn or you used a work email address so that we can verify your market role (Corporate/Firm/Provider/Government), then you can access all premium eDJ reports, raw survey results, eDJ Notes, etc. by taking a short monthly poll. This converts you to a Participating member in our not for profit research site. I hope to do a full research report updating the state of mobile device discovery soon.

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Mobile Device Discovery