Simon leads CommVault's Information Access & Management business including Information Risk, eDiscovery, Compliance and Information Search.

Over the last 20 years he has worked for many large multi-national while building deep expertise in a range of topics including business intelligence, data warehousing, application and information management.

Most recently, Simon has gained specific experience in data retention and archiving, working for or with some of the leading companies in this field to gain specialist knowledge in information risk and compliance.

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.

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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