Innovations for LegalTech New York and Beyond

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Guest post from Emily Wojcik, Product Marketing Manager

It's that time of year again...time for LegalTech New York. For those of who you follow CommVault but are not familiar with LegalTech, it is the largest and most important legal technology event in the U.S. Each January, we look forward to battling the weather and sharing with the legal community all that CommVault has to offer for creating efficiencies throughout the eDiscovery process.

This week, we're thrilled to introduce some really exciting innovations that specifically support the needs of legal, compliance and records teams. These center on self-service, accelerating cloud deployments, enabling users to simplify otherwise complex tasks, and reducing overall cost and risk. Before I go into detail, let's take a moment to discuss what's driving these innovations.

Businesses are faced with massive amounts of complex data that is growing up to 80 percent year over year.ⁱ CommVault talks a lot about what that means from a storage efficiency standpoint, but what does this explosion of data mean for eDiscovery practices and the professionals involved in eDiscovery litigation? Well, for one thing, it means a whole new universe of emerging information sources to consider when preserving, collecting and discovering data. Think about desktops/laptops, audio/visual files, images, databases, social media and a slew of other data types that are often rampant throughout an organization, living at the edge, and frequently managed in "silos." Today, we walk a fine line between over-collection, which brings companies higher review costs, as well as under-collection, which presents them the risk of missing key evidence, perhaps located in one of these emerging data sources. That's why making sure all data sources, even those at the "edge," are accounted for by using a repeatable and defensible eDiscovery strategy which is a top-of-mind concern for business and IT teams alike. In fact, easing eDiscovery burdens is the #1 pressure point cited in the Forrester Research, Inc. Global Message Archiving Online Survey,ⁱⁱ above lowering storage costs and boosting application performance.

We're mindful of these pressures and focused on addressing these challenges head on. The innovations we're providing customers today will go a long way to helping solve some of these challenges which include:

• Enhanced interface that's purpose built for legal users, helping to empower corporate legal departments with their own self-service search. The ability to search, navigate and mine data allows legal users to conduct discovery without relying on IT, saving costs and time spent in day-to-day litigation. In addition, enhanced single-click preservation from any data source managed by Simpana software is now driven by simple metadata, as well as ESI content index for better preparation in early case assessments.
• Simpana OnePass capability, the industry's first converged backup, archive and reporting tool for streamlined collection, preservation and access of data that has become "too big." What does this mean? From a single data collection, information is copied, indexed and stored with a "one pass" backup, archive and reporting process into Simpana ContentStore—an intelligent, highly scalable, virtual repository for eDiscovery. This capability slashes the combined time typically required to backup, archive and report by more than 50 percent over traditional methods. With a single data store, businesses can streamline preservation and eliminate data redundancy during the review process that causes costs to skyrocket.
• Extended SharePoint discovery with support for Microsoft BLOB storage. As one of the fastest growing applications in Microsoft's history, SharePoint workspaces are characterized by unwieldy and multiple versions of the same document, sites, sub-sites and folders. CommVault's SharePoint support ensures that all documents created, modified by or accessible to custodians are collected in a discovery effort, while avoiding over-collection of duplicate data. Our support for "next generation" BLOB storage now enables legal teams to proactively respond and avoid costly collection processes of outdated data by simply searching indexed data already at rest within Simpana ContentStore.
• Simpana ObjectLink, a REST-based API that emulates the Amazon S3 interface as a private storage cloud connector for centralizing application data retention in a massively scalable, hardware-agnostic repository. As the number and type of content sources increase, cloud computing offers businesses a viable way to centralize the management of growing data. The Simpana ObjectLink interface allows a customer to push web content into the Simpana ContentStore for retention. Legal teams can then easily protect, archive and recover this data, while also retaining versions and histories that can be opted into the legal review process as needed. With Simpana ObjectLink, organizations can expand the scope of the Simpana ContenStore to include web documents and business records to reduce overall collection and preservation costs, while ensuring that data is searchable and fully discoverable for improved information insight.
• CommVault's new Edge Data Protection solution provides centralized protection, preservation and access to thousands of Windows, Mac and Linux systems. And with integrated content indexing, legal teams can centralize discovery of edge data that resides in the datacenter or cloud storage to lower risk and eDiscovery costs. Why is this so critical? Well, in today's mobile work environments, desktop and laptop computers often hold data that is a target for legal and compliance investigations. Corporations need a defensible and automated solution to identify, collect, preserve and review all relevant data sources—including information stored at the edge. The Simpana Edge Data Protection solution provides the option to report and index content at every client agent, thereby ensuring legal teams can preserve, protect and access business critical information on desktops and laptops to meet any eDiscovery or compliance challenge.

At LegalTech, we're collaborating with industry experts in a Town Hall session "How to Help Corporate Legal Departments Demonstrate Value Back to the Organization," a topic that has never been more timely as legal teams wrestle with controlling eDiscovery costs in a climate of tightening budgets. During the session, we'll talk about which area of the EDRM process warrants further cost improvements and what technology exists to address it. The innovations I listed above are just a sampling of the value that we are delivering to businesses using Simpana software. While we're on the subject, what does organizational value look like for you? In-house cost containment? Ease of access? Realistic and proactive eDiscovery budget planning? Please share with us.

Perhaps you are attending LegalTech yourself. If so, we'll see you in booth 1401. If not, I urge you to find out if there are others from your organization attending and send them our way. As you can see, we have much to share.

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ⁱGartner Inc., "Predicts 2012: Doing More With Less in Storage Has Never Been More Imperative," John Monroe, Dave Russell, Sheila Childs, Joseph Unsworth, December 2011
ⁱⁱForrester Research, Inc., Q1 2011 Global Message Archiving Online Survey

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Another year, another Gartner Magic Quadrant on Enterprise Information Archiving

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

It's hard to believe that a year has passed already, but it's once again time for Gartner's report on their perspective of the world of enterprise information archiving (EIA). It looks like vendor placements in this year's Magic Quadrant (MQ)¹ were influenced by several emerging trends including on-premise and SaaS archive clouds, social media and the stronger links between archive and eDiscovery use cases.

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Tackling the Big Data Retention Challenge

Monday, October 17, 2011

As I head down to DC this week for the Association of Records Managers (ARMA) annual conference, my mind is on "Big Data." I'm thinking about various content types and the never-ending retention requirements of repositories like SharePoint that are bursting at the seams due to the inflow of data, as well as the constant demands from users for meaningful access to information.

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Riding the Wave of the Perfect eDiscovery Storm

Monday, June 13, 2011

You've heard the rumors, seen it in other IT sectors and now it is here. The long-awaited Gartner E-Discovery Software Magic Quadrant (MQ). For those that haven't felt it, the eDiscovery market has been growing steadily over the last few years and as such, was much in need of some direction on vendor selection. Essentially the time was right for an MQ.

Since Gartner announced their intention to produce an MQ vs. the previous Gartner Marketscope, the eDiscovery market itself has sailed into a state of flux with two culprits at the helm. The first is the directional change from SaaS-based eDiscovery models for legal collection, preservation and processing to corporate legal control of an in-house system for improved efficiency. Since the eDiscovery market has grown up on the premise of outsourcing to law firms, this strategy signals a strong corporate realignment on the reduction of costs and risk associated with eDiscovery.

The second is the industry consolidation of hosted or point-specific vendor solutions with little connectivity or thought for efficiency. Symantec's recent announcement to acquire Clearwell is a good example of a company who views eDiscovery as a use case for archiving and brought Clearwell in an attempt to strengthen its archive business. The trouble is they now have two solutions that pretty much operate independently. Another is Iron Mountain which acquired the Mimosa digital archive and discovery solution in 2007 to complement its paper retention business and now, 4 years later due to poor integration, has had to sell this solution and other digital solutions to Autonomy which will of course continue to be sold as separate toolsets. Add to this the myriad of smaller organizations eagerly expanding their execution models through partnerships and all of a sudden, the complexities of moving and preserving information, across geo-boundaries, inside and outside the firewall, and into the cloud converge to create the "perfect storm."

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What Do Customers Want from Their Technology?

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Guest post from Emily Wojcik, Product Marketing

I'd like to start by thanking Simon for the invitation to contribute to his blog. Throughout the year, I'll be sharing our plans to reach various information management stakeholders, as well as anecdotes I'm hearing about end user issues and how we are working to address those real world challenges together.

May is a busy month on our events calendar. Our team is especially excited about the Contoural Advanced Records/Information Management and Litigation Readiness Symposium Series. I know, the name is quite a mouthful but the program is spot on with regards to where CommVault is headed from an Information Governance standpoint. The symposium will cover what's really keeping IT and Legal teams up at night, from getting buy-in from senior management to avoiding eDiscovery pitfalls. We're thrilled with the program because CommVault can address these concerns with a cost-effective and defensible solution for the retention, search and discovery of all corporate information. This series is also an opportunity for us to get closer to communities like ARMA, whose members all have valuable insight and experience. Contoural has collaborated with ARMA as well as local and state associations of paralegals.

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The content of this blog reflects the thoughts and opinions of the author, and does not represent the thoughts, opinions, plans or strategies of CommVault Systems, Inc. ("CommVault") and CommVault undertakes no obligation to update, correct or modify any statements made by the author of this blog. Any and all third party links provided by this blog are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, CommVault.