You’re Going To Be Sued! The Role of EDD IT | Complex Discovery

The Role of e-Discovery Technology and How IT Can Address Immediate Requirements & Prepare for the Future. It is a fact of today’s business environment that most companies are going to get sued. And, increasingly the Information Technology (IT) department is the focus of those lawsuits.

For the complete article - visit the new Complex Discovery site - an expanded version of the InfoGovernance blog.

ComplexDiscovery News Via Yahoo! Pipes

InfoGovernance To ComplexDiscovery = More Robust And Objective eDiscovery Content

Over a month ago I posted to the InfoGovernance Blog that my blogging in the "InfoGovernance format" was ending.   One month later with this post I am excited to share with you a new "format" for sharing information that not only provides the same objective information of the old InfoGovernance Blog, but that also provides additional, more robust content that may enhance your ability to understand and conduct electronic discovery centric activities.

Welcome ComplexDiscovery

The new Complex Discovery website (www.complexdiscovery.com) contains information, tools, and tactics relevant to the growing electronic discovery market. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems - and with that in mind - my hope is that the content provided on this site and via the corresponding ComplexDiscovery  RSS feeds will help you as you translate complex discovery into executional simplicity.   Organized around key electronic discovery activities to include Collection, Processing, Review, and Production, this site is designed to serve as an objective, one-source site for exploring, understanding, and executing the complex task of electronic discovery.   Complementary to many of the fine electronic discovery sites/feeds available today, key features of this new site include:

• Scribd - iPaper Document Library:   A growing online repository of interesting and applicable papers relevant to the field of electronic discovery.
• Yahoo! Pipes EDD Mashup (RSS):   An aggregation of key electronic discovery RSS feeds that serves to provide continuous updates on topics related to electronic discovery.
• Twitter - ComplexDiscovery Updates:  A Twitter feed that highlights the daily posting on the specific ComplexDiscovery RSS feed.
• Mogulus - Video Learning on EDD:  A video channel designed to share publicly available video presentations relating to electronic discovery.
• Mofuse - Website Mobile Version:  A mobile version of the ComplexDiscovery website designed specifically for mobile devices to include cell/iPhones.

To learn more about the new ComplexDiscovery website, click here.

If you have blogs/RSS feeds that you would like fed directly into the Yahoo! Pipes EDD Mashup - please send your feed URL and reason for request to wrrobinson@complexdiscovery.com.  This capability will allow for the automated, unfiltered presentation of your relevant information directly to the ComplexDiscovery audience.   To tap into the Yahoo! Pipes EDD Mashup for your daily update on electronic discovery, click here and add the link to your RSS aggregator.

Authenticity, Accessibility, Relevance, and 4,051 Posts | InfoGovernance Engagement Area

When I began working in the electronic discovery arena, one kind mentor shared with me the fact that "for an electronic record to be considered as evidence, it had to be authentic, accessible, and relevant". Now, after over 4,000 posts on this blog, I realize that while this blog is incredibly relevant - it does need full time focus to provide the service deserving of the over 50,000 visitors since January 2006. So this post, number 4,052 - will be the last of my posts on this blog in this current format - a format that has been incredibly interesting and professionally fulfilling to me.

Why do I share this with you? Because I want to thank you for reading the blog - making comments on the blog (many which were not fun to post - but were posted in the desire for objectivity) - and providing affirmation when you enjoyed the posts. Its been incredibly fun.

Blogging is a great tool for communicating information and points of view - I would challenge any eDiscovery leader who has not made it part of their/their company's communications repertoire - to take the time to investigate it as a way to help share information with potential clients and influencers.

Great luck, Godspeed, and enjoy the posts of the many folks who now invest a good bit of time and effort in posting things they do feel relevant for the growing area of eDiscovery.

Sincerely/Rob

Curating Emails: A Life-Cycle Approach To The Management And Preservation Of Email Messages | Digital Curation Centre

Written By Maureen Pennock of the University Of Bath, UKOLN, UK, this installment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages. Although it is not possible to offer an immediate 'one-size-fits-all' solution, the installment outlines a framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the organisational and human challenges to successful e-mail curation. The installment also offers some thoughts on the future development or evolution of e-mail - an evolution that is inevitable, given the rapid pace of technological advancement over the past fifty years and the current changes in messaging technologies.

 

Source: Digital Curation Centre

Stroz Friedberg Acquires Leading Electronic Discovery Platform | Yahoo! Finance

Combination Provides Clients Unmatched Experience and Cutting-edge Technology for Auto-indexing, Searching and Retrieving Paper and Electronic Files

NEW YORK, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Stroz Friedberg, a leading consulting and technical services firm announced today the acquisition of Docuity, a provider of advanced electronic discovery technology solutions.

"Combining Stroz Friedberg's prowess in digital forensics and electronic discovery consulting with Docuity's innovative technology will give our client's end-to-end e-discovery management with superior capabilities to index and search large volumes of unstructured data" stated Eric Friedberg, Stroz Friedberg's Co-President. "The result is better cost controls and an ability to ensure quality throughout the entire e-discovery process. We are particularly excited to share with our global clients the unique features of our new platform, including auto-indexing, sophisticated clustering and other user-friendly retrieval functions, and foreign language processing and translation capabilities," he added.

With the Docuity acquisition, Stroz Friedberg now has the capability to offer comprehensive e-discovery management, processing, load file creation and online hosting review using the most advanced document and knowledge management tools available. The firm's patent-pending technology uses artificial intelligence, optical character recognition, natural language, pattern recognition and rules-based processing to extract from scanned paper and electronic documents key information such as the printed date of the document, the actual author, the actual addressee, the entity from which the document was sent, and the persons, entities and actions referenced in the document; all critical data that formerly required expensive and time- consuming manual effort.

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  Yahoo! Finance

Inference Data and Forrester Research Webinar 'Transforming Legal Discovery' Now Available On Demand | Yahoo! Finance

Forrester Research Principal E-Discovery Analyst Barry Murphy and Inference Data President Nicholas Croce discuss e-discovery best practices and the latest technologies for streamlining analysis and review

NEW YORK, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- In a live webinar broadcast last week, Forrester Research Principal Analyst Barry Murphy and Inference Data President Nick Croce presented a roadmap for managing growing amounts of data, meeting federal e-discovery mandates, and using new technology to address inefficient review processes which account for 70 percent of litigation costs. During this webinar, Inference Data and Forrester Research advise corporations and outside counsel to manage electronic discovery as an end-to-end process and to focus on marrying internal best practices with the next-generation of e-discovery technologies. The free webinar, "Transforming Legal Discovery: Next-Generation Technologies for Streamlining EDD & Review" is available on demand at: http://www.inferencedata.com/webinar.htm.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  Yahoo! Finance

Smaller E-Discovery Costs for Small Biz | Legal Technology

By Richard B. Friedman, The Corporate Counselor

In the days of only paper documents, smaller companies could afford to wait until they became involved in a lawsuit to worry about pretrial discovery, but today's reliance on digital information makes that a risky and unnecessarily expensive strategy. To meet the requirements of the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure concerning electronic discovery that went into effect on Dec. 1, 2006, companies need to plan and prepare ahead of time. Although these rules present a new set of challenges for small companies, the good news is that developing and implementing an e-discovery strategy does not always have to be an expensive project. By taking a handful of cost-effective steps, companies can save both time and money in litigation costs in the long run.

MEETING THE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

As is widely known, technology has become a great equalizer. Even the smallest companies have the same powerful communication tools at their disposal as the largest enterprises. From e-mail to instant messaging, voice mail, electronic documents, databases and spreadsheets, information technology is readily available at a reasonable cost to businesses of every size. In fact, the availability of such powerful technology has allowed even small companies to reach and serve customers around the world and, in some cases, to become extraordinarily successful.

While technology has given even small companies access to global communications capabilities, it also has laden them with new legal obligations. No matter what their size, all companies involved in federal court cases have an equal duty to abide by the Federal Rules. Further, given the ubiquity of digital information in commerce today, state legislatures and courts will almost certainly eventually follow suit.

At the heart of the Federal Rules for e-discovery are the obligations to be able to locate, preserve and produce in a timely manner digital information that is relevant to the subject matter of a lawsuit. While the amended Federal rules do allow the courts to consider the relative abilities of both parties to bear the costs of electronic discovery and to shift the costs in some circumstances, smaller companies still have to take reasonable prelitigation measures to comply with the law. Those companies that fail to make a reasonable effort to meet the e-discovery standards risk not only incurring higher than necessary e-discovery costs, they also expose themselves to damaging court sanctions.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  Legal Technology

Autonomy ZANTAZ Manages the World's Largest Email Archive | PRNewswire

CAMBRIDGE, England and PLEASANTON, California, March 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy ZANTAZ, a leader in the archiving, eDiscovery and Proactive Information Risk Management (IRM) markets , today announced that its Digital Safe on-demand compliance and eDiscovery archival solution had the largest amount of data under management.

Leveraging Autonomy's IDOL search engine, ZANTAZ claims the unique position of being the only service provider to create a consolidated archive of all information sources, including e-mail and IM, voice video, and enterprise systems. The November 2007 acquisition by Autonomy of electronic records management software provider Meridio will provide more-robust retention management technology for integration with the archiving offerings.

Hosted services for email archiving provide massive storage capacity and scalability, along with the management and maintenance, for huge volumes of information and records that organizations are required to archive by regulations including SEC Rule 17a-4. Autonomy ZANTAZ Digital Safe is a set of on-demand compliance archiving, supervision and pre-discovery products designed to help global organizations meet the supervision, records retention and retrieval requirements of these industry and government regulations. Autonomy ZANTAZ additionally offers premise-based software solutions for consolidated archiving.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  PRNewswire

Overwhelmed By Unstructured Data, Users Seek New Platforms | InformationWeek

Nearly half of the respondents surveyed by EMC said content management offerings require too much effort to implement.

By W. David Gardner, InformationWeek

IT professionals are struggling and often overwhelmed with waves of "unstructured" information they increasingly must deal with and often can't justify the time and expense of corralling the material, according to a survey released Tuesday at the AIIM Conference in Boston.

After polling more than 200 IT professionals, the survey, prepared by EMC (NYSE: EMC), found that nearly one-half of the respondents (47%) said content management offerings today require too much effort to implement. The biggest stumbling block appears to be the difficulty of integrating disparate technology components, according to 37% of those polled. Legacy systems ranked as the second-highest response, or so said 34% of those surveyed.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  InformationWeek

Autonomy Corp Agrees To Software License Deal With Barclays Capital | CNN Money

LONDON, Mar. 6, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) -- Autonomy Corp PLC said it has entered into an agreement with Barclays (NYSE:BCS) Capital to license the company's intelligent data operating layer software. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Source:  CNN Money

HP and CoSign Digital Signatures Make Migration to Electronic Document Management Practical | PRWeb

HP, a cutting-edge global technology company, and ARX, a leading provider of digital signature (standard electronic signature) solutions, today announced the launch of a co-initiative designed to both assist companies migrating from paper to Enterprise Content Management Solutions (ECM), and help them avoid reintroduction of paper into workflow processes.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 5, 2008 -- HP, a cutting-edge global technology company, and ARX, a leading provider of digital signature (standard electronic signature) solutions, today announced the launch of a co-initiative designed to both assist companies migrating from paper to Enterprise Content Management Solutions (ECM), and help them avoid reintroduction of paper into workflow processes.

The challenge facing companies that transition from a paper-based system to an ECM, is the inability to make the change instantly, as many mission-critical documents and workflows throughout an organization need to remain in their paper or manual form for a transition period. However, paper documents can begin a migration to an ECM using scanners, without any interruption to mission critical processes. Yet, even in this scenario, paper is reintroduced into the workflow when documents require signatures during collaboration and approval processes.

The HP and ARX co-initiative utilizes HP document management scanners and eliminates the need to reintroduce paper documents into the workflow for signatures by featuring ARX's CoSign®, a digital signature solution that signs and seals electronic documents. CoSign closes the final gap in the paperless cycle by eliminating the need to reprint documents for signing. The co-initiative combines the high-end capabilities of HP's full-duplex, sheet-feed scanning, with CoSign's ability to sign scanned images and popular document formats including: Microsoft® Word, Excel®, Outlook®, Adobe® PDF, TIFF, AutoCAD®, InfoPath®, Lotus Forms, and many more).

According to John Marchioni, VP of Business Development, Americas, ARX, "Digital signatures are gaining momentum in the marketplace, and a co-initiative with a company like HP conveys that reality and further validates CoSign's ability to expedite business processes and reduce costs, while maintaining document integrity as business documents and processes are transformed from paper to an electronic form."

Von Hansen, Vice President and General Manager (Business Inkjet and Scanning, Imaging and Printing Group) for HP explained, "HP is pleased with the opportunity to work with ARX, a key player in digital signature solutions. This co-initiative allowed us to effortlessly couple our feature-rich scanners with CoSign's comprehensive resolution to enhancing workflow within an ECM."

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  PRWeb

InfoWorld's Guide to Content Management Systems | CMS Wire

By Barb Mosher

Think you need a content management system of some kind, but aren’t sure exactly? Well you probably aren’t alone. And with what seems like hundreds of options available for content management products and services, knowing how to define your requirements and go about selecting a solution is critical.

InfoWorld has released a Test Center Guide for Content Management Systems to help you make that decision an informed one and hopefully the right one for your company.

Before you start, make sure you understand the difference between Enterprise Content Management(ECM) and a subset of it — Web Content Management (WCM). There are few ECM vendors in play today due to a number of recent consolidations. But there is a much larger number of pure-play WCM vendors who offer fairly decent solutions.

According to the InfoWorld article there are five key questions you need to carefully think about:

1. Does the CMS fit into your IT infrastructure? You are unlikely to put a Microsoft-based product into a Java environment, so know your IT infrastructure requirements and other technical requirements that will influence your decision.
2. What features are most important? You won’t find all the features you need in a single CMS - so go with the 80-20 rule: “Find the product with 80 percent of the functions most important to you using 20 percent of your overall budget”.
3. Will it play nice with your enterprise systems? Make sure the product provides an API that you can use to integrate the CMS with your other systems. Also look for other data interchange standards including XML, RSS, and Web services.
4. What more can you get beyond the basics? What kind of add-on products does the vendor have/provide? Do they have an SDK for developing your own?
5. How much will it cost? Ah, the age old question, how much does it cost and can you afford it. Look for all costs associated — not just licensing.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  CMS Wire

ESG Lab Report Validates High Performance, Scalability and Data De-duplication Capabilities of the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System | Business Wire

Independent Tests Confirm Fast Backup and Restore Rates, Linear Scalability and Excellent Ease of Use

WESTBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ExaGrid Systems, Inc. (http://www.exagrid.com), the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with byte-level data de-duplication, today announced that the results of a lab review by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), an analyst firm specializing in the testing and analysis of specific storage-related products, have confirmed that the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System provides leading backup and restore rates, linear performance and scalability with large and growing data amounts, and substantial cost savings due to data de-duplication.

The recently published report details the results of ESG Lab's comprehensive testing of the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System and validates ExaGrid’s product claims in all aspects of data backup and recovery, including high-speed backup and restore rates, data de-duplication ratios, linear scalability, remote replication and general ease of installation and management.

The following excerpts from the ESG Lab report discuss ExaGrid’s performance in several key areas that organizations should consider as they evaluate a disk-based backup system with data de-duplication.

Backup and Restore Performance:

“ESG Research indicates that performance is the top priority for data center managers considering a disk-based backup solution. ExaGrid uses a scalable post-process de-duplication approach for optimal backup and recovery performance. As an organization’s data grows, the ExaGrid approach maintains day-one backup and restore performance. Using real-world data and a real-world backup application, ESG Lab has confirmed that ExaGrid can backup data at a rate of 4 TB/hr for a fully configured grid. Based on ESG Lab’s experience testing a number of disk-based backup systems in recent years, this is a superb level of performance.”

Real-world Data De-duplication Ratios:

“Data de-duplication changes the economics of backup to disk by reducing the cost of data retained on disk. ESG Lab testing and feedback from ExaGrid customers indicates that de-duplication can be used to reduce disk capacity by a factor of twenty to one or more depending on the type of data being backed up, the backup policies in use and the number of backups retained on disk.”

Linear Scalability:

“ExaGrid scales to meet a wide variety of performance and capacity requirements. ESG Lab found that adding a new server to an existing grid is straightforward. Automatic spillover and migration provides the flexibility needed to grow, maintain and tune a growing pool of virtualized capacity. Taken together with the space savings provided by de-duplication, the scalability of a singly-managed ExaGrid system reduces the cost and complexity of managing growing disk-based backup requirements.”

WAN-Efficient Remote Replication:

“ESG Lab has verified that ExaGrid’s data de-duplication significantly reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the WAN, enabling what may have otherwise been impossible or prohibitively costly. ESG Lab has also confirmed that ExaGrid remote replication has no impact on backup performance. It’s a cost-effective alternative to tape for offsite archival.”

Ease of Setup and Management:

“Initial configuration of an ExaGrid system is simple and intuitive. Integration with existing backup application polices was straightforward. The first backup job was running sixteen minutes after beginning a configuration from scratch on a pre-wired system.”

“It’s easy for vendors to make big claims about their products; it’s another thing entirely to go into the lab with an outside party like ESG and have your claims tested and fully validated,” said Marc Crespi, vice president of product management for ExaGrid Systems, Inc. “We are proud that ESG witnessed first-hand the leading backup and restore performance, linear scalability, effective data de-duplication and tremendous ease of use that our customers have long enjoyed with the ExaGrid Disk-based backup System.”

“ESG Lab believes that organizations struggling with the cost, complexity and risk associated with tape backups would be wise to consider the bottom line savings that can be achieved with ExaGrid: faster backups, quicker and more reliable restores, lower risk, lower expenses (capital and operational) and last, but not least, a greener solution with optimized power and cooling,” said Claude Bouffard, ESG Lab engineer.

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  Business Wire

AIIM Announces 2008 Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Award Winners | ECM Connection

AIIM,the international authority on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) announced the winners of the 2008 Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Awards. Awards were presented last night at the annual awards ceremony coinciding with the AIIM International Exposition & Conference taking place in Boston, MA.

The Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Award was established to recognize excellence in the ECM field. The term "Best Practice" denotes a standard of excellence that has been achieved with an organization and refers to a process that can be quantified, adapted, and repeated.

This year's Carl E. Nelson Best Practice Award winners by category are:

Small Company Category

End User: Office of City Attorney, Torrance, CA
Vendor: eCopy

The City Attorney's Office in Torrance, California is responsible for handling all the city's legal affairs - but due to disorganized files and inefficient, paper-based transactions, operations had slowed dramatically. The office had no effective way to retrieve documents, meaning legal work often had to be redone or outsourced. In fact, the municipality was outsourcing more than 75 % of its legal work-at a cost of up to $350 per hour-simply because it couldn't manage the records and workflows associated with its duties. Today, the City Attorney's Office operates efficiently with a nearly paperless workflow. It has cut its dependence on outside counsel and handles 95% of cases in-house - resulting in significant time and cost savings for the City. The combination of eCopy, Interwoven and RainMaker Summit in the City Attorney's Office allowed them to reduce the number of administrative staff from 9 to 5, representing $240,000 in annual savings. Prior to implementing eCopy, the City was outsourcing more than 75% of its legal work-at a cost of up to $350 per hour-simply because it couldn't manage the records and workflow associated with its duties. The ultimate benefit has been the ability for all attorneys and support staff in the Torrance office to retrieve files, share data and collaborate on cases with confidence.

Medium Company Category

End User: Horry County Government
Vendor: Hyland Software

With an enterprise content management system (ECM) that is integrated with a comprehensive geographic information system (GIS), Horry County (SC) has taken advantage of the workflow efficiencies of paperless business processes, realized vastly improved response time to constituents' public requests and avoided capital expenditures that typically accompany exponential growth. Horry County selected OnBase as its ECM solution, and rolled out the initial implementation of OnBase to the Storm Water and Public Works departments in order to be able to track easements for water and sewer. They integrated OnBase to the GIS and Azteca Cityworks enterprise work order management System. Because they were able to attach documents to maps of water infrastructure piping, workers with permissions to log into the system can simply access the map with any Internet connection and click on the desired map to obtain all documents associated with that item. Incorporating OnBase into their GIS environment has allowed policy makers in Horry County to not only keep up with the needs of a rapidly growing county, but to continue to attain excellence as a flagship community, realizing the benefits of an effective digital government.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  ECM Connection

Walking The Data Minefield | Processor

Changes In Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure Put New Pressure On Businesses

The most recent changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or FRCP, gave notice to businesses throughout the country that there would be new accountability pertaining to the retention of electronic data and the ability to produce specific information for potential litigation. The guidelines have increased the critical nature of creating a strategic plan for storage and placed new burdens on IT staffs.

Businesses attempting to adapt and find new ways to manage, organize, and search for data are driving fast growth of tools designed to enhance the information search process. According to research agency Gartner, the worldwide market for enterprise search software totaled nearly $861 million last year and is expected to grow to more than $1.2 billion by the end of the decade.

“As long as search and information access capability remains a compelling business requirement at both the desktop and enterprise level, many vendors, from startups to established vendors, will compete to provide basic and highly focused offerings,” says Tom Eld, an analyst with Gartner.

“However, no one vendor can solve all information access needs,” Eld says. “Search and information access is not a one-size-fits-all marketplace, and the market will continue to develop, whether within individual devices, through organizational intranets, across the Web, or specialized in a digital asset type.”

Creating An Appropriate Data Retention Policy

Eld believes large enterprises have entered into a new phase of deployment and use of information search tools; the associated technologies are maturing and now offer improved indexing, querying, presentation, and drill-down capabilities.
But despite the changes in the FRCP that have been in effect for more than a year and the seemingly nonstop growth in the amount of information being generated, data protection and search technology remains on the back burner for many small and midsized enterprises that continue to play a chancy game of denial.

“From our experience within small and medium businesses, data and information management is something that everyone is supposed to be doing, but when they look at their list of big problems they are facing, it falls down to the bottom because they believe they have other issues that are more pressing,” says Drew Meyer, product marketing manager for StoreVault a division of Network Appliance specializing in storage solutions tailored for the SME market.

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  Processor

Xythos Enlists Catalyst Resources for "On Demand" SaaS Application Design and AJAX UI Strategy | PRWeb

The recently-released "Xythos On Demand" is a Software as a Service (SaaS) content management service for smaller businesses and departments of larger organizations. Xythos recognized that rolling out a successful SaaS would involve more than simply repackaging their existing Enterprise Document Management Suite to the Web. They enlisted Catalyst Resources to quickly define and validate the SaaS application design as well as identify AJAX behaviors that would have high impact and solve real world business problems.

San Mateo, CA (PRWEB) March 6, 2008 -- The recently-released "Xythos On Demand" is a Software as a Service (SaaS) content management service for smaller businesses and departments of larger organizations. Xythos recognized that rolling out a successful SaaS would involve more than simply repackaging their existing Enterprise Document Management Suite to the Web. They enlisted Catalyst Resources to quickly define and validate the SaaS application design as well as identify AJAX behaviors that would have high impact and solve real world business problems.

Hosted email, e-commerce and sales force automation are commonplace solutions for small to medium sized business (SMBs) that don't have the resources to manage their own installations. Xythos had identified secure document management and collaboration as another hi-value service for SMBs. Their Enterprise Document Management Suite had a proven track record for use by Fortune 500 and government organizations. Their goal now was to migrate a version to on-demand that would bridge sophisticated document management technology with the simplicity and rich user experience needed to target small and medium customer markets.

Xythos turned to Catalyst Resources to help them define the Xythos On Demand application user interface and validate it with representative SMB users and internal teams.

"There is a growing awareness that the SaaS revenue model is entirely dependent upon a successful and satisfying overall user experience." said Paul Giurata, managing partner of Catalyst Resources. "Perceived performance, dynamic behaviors, clear paths of action, and ease-of-use matter as much as features and functionality. Individuals expect their online business applications to have the same kind of intuitive, rich interface and Web 2.0-type features as the online consumer applications they use everyday."

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  PRWeb

New Partnership Reduces Exploding E-Discovery and Document Review Costs; Produces Better Results | Business Wire

Tusker Group Tapped For FTI Partner Program

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Texas-based Tusker Group has become a recognized service partner of FTI Consulting, Inc. and achieved certification on the Ringtail® global electronic discovery platform.

Tusker Group specializes exclusively in off-shore legal document review for corporate legal groups and their outside counsel. The first to implement dedicated, long-term project managers and legal professionals to individual clients, Tusker Group has provided reviewing and coding for clients who use Ringtail products for e-discovery since 2004.

“As the number of documents to be reviewed explodes, this partnership will decrease the costs associated with complex litigation,” notes Mike Dolan, CEO of Tusker Group. “We complement the front-end discovery provided by the powerful Ringtail platform; FTI Consulting customers now have the option to consolidate discovery and review with a single team, experienced in collaborating on the most difficult of cases.”

Tusker Group is a leader in complex litigation document review for a wide range of matters and industries, including: intellectual property, healthcare, energy, financial services and pharmaceuticals.

"We are pleased to have Tusker Group as a service partner, working for faster and more efficient document review,” said Ed Pfromer, senior managing director of alliances at FTI Consulting, Inc.

The Ringtail platform from FTI Consulting, Inc. delivers time and cost savings to lawyers and investigators working on large, complex matters. The Web-based technology scales to handle hundreds of users, thousands of cases and millions of documents in more than 200 languages.

The 2006 Socha-Gelbman Electronic Discovery Survey Report estimated electronic document discovery revenues to be about $2 billion, up 51 percent from 2005. The survey anticipates the market to grow to $4 billion by 2009. E-discovery software reduces the labor involved in sorting mountains of raw data used in today’s legal battles.

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  Business Wire

FaceTime Enhances Logging and Archiving Capabilities of IMAuditor to Ensure Compliance for Sametime and Microsoft OCS Customers | Marketwire

Features High Availability, Rich Compliance for Sametime 8.0 and Microsoft OCS, With Granular Controls for Audio and Video

BELMONT, CA--(Marketwire - March 6, 2008) - FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions that control greynets and manage unified communications (UC) in the enterprise, today announced availability of an enhanced version of IMAuditor. It enables enterprises to benefit from their IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server deployments with a highly available, fault-tolerant and enhanced security and compliance infrastructure that includes support for new modalities like VoIP, video and Web conferencing.

FaceTime has seen growing concern among large organizations over the past several weeks, examining their ability to log, archive and retrieve instant messages.

The recent concern is fueled in part by news reports related to $7.1 billion in losses caused by a rogue trader at Société Générale, a large French bank. Earlier this month, instant messages reportedly exposed a new twist in the scandal surrounding the record losses. Other cases also have brought e-discovery to the news forefront in recent months, including a patent infringement trial involving Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp that resulted in fines to Qualcomm in excess of $9 million due to its slow response to e-discovery requests. (See related news release, "Unprecedented Fraud and Large Fines Highlight Compliance Requirements for Unified Communications," issued today.)

IMAuditor 9.1 helps organizations realize the benefits of UC and enterprise instant messaging deployments by providing guaranteed compliance to meet regulatory and corporate requirements, including logging, archiving and easy retrieval of Web conferencing data. The deep compliance protection also covers the content of instant messages and their attachments over public networks. For more information or to request a product evaluation, visit http://www.facetime.com/productservices/imauditor.aspx

For the complete article, click here.

Source:  Marketwire

Considering ESI? Definitions, Questions, And Notes | InfoGovernance Engagement Area

By Rob Robinson

With the introduction of the December 2006 update to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), legal professionals were definitely made aware of the "arrival" of the digital age in Federal Court. The amendments to FRCP Rule 26 in this December 2006 update highlight this "arrival" as they spell out - among other things: 

• the mandate for involved parties to have early meet-and-confer sessions to discuss and hopefully agree on the handling of electronically stored information,  
• guidance to involved parties as to whether ESI may be considered accessible or not-reasonably-accessible.

In order to comply with this mandate and guidance, it's important for involved parties to have a solid understanding of digital data so they can both plan thoroughly for meet-and-confer sessions and so they can ask the right questions when determining or questioning the accessibility of ESI.   This short aggregation of information presented primarily in checklist/consideration form was prepared with the goal of enhancing my own understanding of digital data.  Organized with definitions and questions for your consideration, my hope is that you may find portions of this useful as you consider cases involving ESI. 

What's The Difference? Three Important And Interrelated Definitions

What Is Electronically Stored Information?

While not specifically defined in the FRCP, electronically stored information, or ESI, is defined in the November 2006 issue of The Third Branch (Newsletter of the Federal Courts) simply as "...all information in computers".

What Is Information?

From a technology perspective, information is defined as the summarization of data. Technically, data are raw facts and figures that are processed into information, such as summaries and totals. But since information can also be the raw data for the next job or person, the two terms cannot be precisely defined, and both are used interchangeably.

What Is Data?

• Factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions.
• Computer Science. Numerical or other information represented in a form suitable for processing by computer.

Should I Give Them The "Twelfth" Degree? 12 Planning Considerations For ESI

Based on the interchangeability of definitions, ESI may be referenced as "data" in remainder of this post.

Data Considerations In Preparing For Cases Involving ESI

1. What Is The Scope Of The Data In Question?
2. What Is The Structure Of The Data?
3. What Is The Format Of The Data?
4. What Is The State Of The Data?
5. How Does One "Connect" To The Data?
6. How Does One Get To Active State Data?
7. How Does One Maintain The Static State Data?
8. How Much Data Will Be Acted Upon?
9. Is The Data Encrypted?
10. What Capabilities Will Be Needed To Display Information?
11. How Will Data Reports And/Or Files Be Provided To Requestor?
12. How Will The Data Be Stored After Being Acted Upon?

In going through these twelve questions and the corresponding notes provided below, one should be able to construct a planning framework from which to consider case specific ESI.

Data Scope (What Is The Scope Of The Data In Question?)

• Entity Scope - Entities that may have had individuals involved in the creation, review, and/or response of data that may contain relevant information for the matter at hand.
• Custodian Scope - Individuals who may have been involved in the creation, review, and/or response of data that may contain relevant information for the matter at hand.
• Data Steward Scope - Individuals who have Information Technology management responsibilities for the entities and individuals determined to be relevant to the matter at hand and/or individuals who maintain access rights to the applications and equipment used by these entities and organizations.
• Geographical Scope - The geographical locales of the entities and individuals that may have been involved in the creation, review, and/or response of communications and/or documents relevant to the matter at hand as well as the locales of the equipment used to support creation, transmission, review, and storage of these communications and/or documents.
• Time Frame Scope - The period of time in which relevant information may have been created, reviewed, and/or responded to for the matter at hand.
• Volume Scope - The estimated volume of data that may contain relevant information for the matter at hand.

Data Structure (What Is The Structure Of The Data?)

• Unstructured - Unstructured data (or unstructured information) refers to masses of (usually) computerized information in which every bit of information does not have an assigned format and significance.   Examples of "unstructured data" may include audio, video and unstructured text such as the body of an email or word processor document.  Unstructured data represents approximately 85% of enterprise data.
• Structured - Structured data (or structured information) refers to masses of (usually) computerized information in which every bit of information has an assigned format and significance.  Examples of "structured data" may include databases such as SQL or Access.   Structured data represents approximately 15% of enterprise data.

Data Format (What Is The Format Of The Data?)

• Still Image - Images that convey their meaning in visual terms, e.g. pictorial images, photographs, posters, graphs, diagrams, documentary architectural drawings.  Formats for such images may be bitmapped (sometimes called raster), vector, or some combination of the two.  A bitmapped image is an array of dots (usually called pixels, from picture elements, when referring to screen display), the type of image produced by a digital camera or a scanner.  Vector images are made up of scalable objects—lines, curves, and shapes—defined in mathematical terms, often with typographic insertions.
• Sound - Media-independent sound content that can be broken into two format sub-categories. The first sub-category consists of formats that represent recorded sound, often called waveform sound. Such formats are employed for applications like popular music recordings, recorded books, and digital oral histories. The second sub-category consists of formats that provide data to support dynamic construction of sound through combinations of software and hardware. Such software includes sequencers and trackers that use data that controls when individual sound elements should start and stop, attributes such as volume and pitch, and other effects that should be applied to the sound elements. The sound elements may be short sections of waveform sound (sometimes called samples or loops) or data elements that characterize a sound so that a synthesizer (which may be in software or hardware) or sound generator (usually hardware) can produce the actual sound. The data are brought together when the file is played, i.e., the sounds are generated in a dynamic manner at runtime. This second sub-category is sometimes called structured audio.
• Moving Image - A variety of media-independent digital moving image formats and their implementations. Some formats, e.g., QuickTime and MPEG-4, allow for a very wide range of implementations compared to, say, MPEG-2, an encoding format whose possible implementations are relatively more constrained.
• Textual - Content works consisting primarily of text.
• Web Archive - Content in formats that might hold the results of a crawl of a Web site or set of Web sites, a dynamic action resulting from the use of a software package that calls up Web pages and captures them in the form disseminated to users.
• Generic - Content in widely acceptable generic formats to include but not limited to specifications for wrappers (e.g., RIFF and ISO_BMFF), bundling formats (e.g., METS and AES-31), and encodings (e.g., UTF-8 and IEEE 754-1985).

Data State (What Is The State Of The Data?)

• Active State:  Active Data is information residing on the hard drives or optical drives of computer systems, that is readily visible to the operating system and/or application software with which it was created and is immediately accessible to users without deletion, modification or reconstruction.
• Static State - Static Data (or Archival Data) is information that is not directly accessible to the user of a computer system but that the organization maintains for long-term storage and record keeping purposes. Static data may be written to removable media such as a CD, magneto-optical media, tape or other electronic storage device, or may be maintained on system hard drives in compressed formats.
• Residual State:  Residual Data (sometimes referred to as “Ambient Data”) refers to data that is not active on a computer system. Residual data includes (1) data found on media free space; (2) data found in file slack space; and (3) data within files that has functionally been deleted in that it is not visible using the application with which the file was created, without use of undelete or special data recovery techniques.

Data Network (How Does One "Connect" To The Data?)

• Non-Networked :  Data is not interconnected to a group of computers.
• Personal Area Network (PAN):   A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computer devices close to one person. Some examples of devices that may be used in a PAN are printers, fax machines, telephones, PDAs, or scanners. The reach of a PAN is typically within about 20-30 feet (approximately 4-6 Meters). PANs can be used for communication among the individual devices (intrapersonal communication), or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet (an uplink).
• Local Area Network (LAN):   A network covering a small geographic area, like a home, office, or building. Current LANs are most likely to be based on Ethernet technology.
• Campus Area Network (CAN):  A network that connects two or more LANs but that is limited to a specific and contiguous geographical area such as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is generally limited to an area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
• Metro Area Network (MAN):   A Metropolitan Area Network is a network that connects two or more Local Area Networks or Campus Area Networks together but does not extend beyond the boundaries of the immediate town, city, or metropolitan area. Multiple routers, switches & hubs are connected to create a MAN.
• Wide Area Network (WAN):  A WAN is a data communications network that covers a relatively broad geographic area (i.e. one city to another and one country to another country) and that often uses transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies.
• InterNetwork:  Two or more networks or network segments connected using devices that operate at layer 3 (the 'network' layer) of the OSI Basic Reference Model, such as a router. Any interconnection among or between public, private, commercial, industrial, or governmental networks may also be defined as an internetwork.  In modern practice, the interconnected networks use the Internet Protocol. There are at least three variants of internetwork, depending on who administers and who participates in them:
  
  
  • Intranet:  An intranet is a set of interconnected networks, using the Internet Protocol and uses IP-based tools such as web browsers, that is under the control of a single administrative entity. That administrative entity closes the intranet to the rest of the world, and allows only specific users. Most commonly, an intranet is the internal network of a company or other enterprise.
  • Extranet:  An extranet is a network or internetwork that is limited in scope to a single organization or entity but which also has limited connections to the networks of one or more other usually, but not necessarily, trusted organizations or entities (e.g. a company's customers may be given access to some part of its intranet creating in this way an extranet, while at the same time the customers may not be considered 'trusted' from a security standpoint). Technically, an extranet may also be categorized as a CAN, MAN, WAN, or other type of network, although, by definition, an extranet cannot consist of a single LAN; it must have at least one connection with an external network.
  • "The Internet":  A specific internetwork , consisting of a worldwide interconnection of governmental, academic, public, and private networks based upon the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) developed by ARPA of the U.S. Department of Defense – also home to the World Wide Web (WWW) and referred to as the 'Internet' with a capital 'I' to distinguish it from other generic internetworks.

Intranets and extranets may or may not have connections to the Internet. If connected to the Internet, the intranet or extranet is normally protected from being accessed from the Internet without proper authorization. The Internet itself is not considered to be a part of the intranet or extranet, although the Internet may serve as a portal for access to portions of an extranet.

Data Storage Network (How Does One Get To Active State Data?)

• Direct Attached Storage (DAS):  Direct-attached storage (DAS) refers to a digital storage system directly attached to a server or workstation, without a storage network in between. It is a retronym, mainly used to differentiate non-networked storage from SAN and NAS.
• Network-Attached Storage (NAS)  Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous network clients.
• Storage Area Network (SAN):  A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries and optical jukeboxes) to servers in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear as locally attached.

Data Storage Media (How Does One Maintain The Static State Data?)

• Semi Conductor Based Storage Media (Memory Cards, USB Flash Drives, PDAs, Digital Audio Players, Digital Cameras, Mobile Phones, Copiers)
• Magnetic Based Storage Media (Floppy Disk, Hard Disk, Magnetic Tape)
• Optical and Magneto Optical Storage Media (CD, CD-ROM, DVD, BD-R, BL-RE, HD DVD, CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, UDO)

Data Volume (How Much Data Will Be Acted Upon?)

• Uncompressed - Data not having undergone a process of transformation from one representation to another, smaller representation from which the original, or a close approximation to it, can be recovered.
• Compressed - Data having undergone a process of transformation from one representation to another, smaller representation from which the original, or a close approximation to it, can be recovered.  Typically determined by Algorithm Complexity and Amount Of Compression.

Data Encryption (Is The Data Encrypted?)

• Data Not-Encrypted - Data not having undergone a procedure that renders the contents of a computer message or file unintelligible to anyone not authorized to read it. The data is encoded mathematically with a string of characters called a data encryption key.
• Data Encrypted - Data having undergone a procedure that renders the contents of a computer message or file unintelligible to anyone not authorized to read it. The data is encoded mathematically with a string of characters called a data encryption key.

Data Code Format  (What Capabilities Will Be Needed To Display Information?)

• Unicode Support -  Unicode Support provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.
• Non-Unicode Support - Data Code Format does not  provide a unique number for every character regardless of platform, program, or language.

Data Output (How Will Data Reports And/Or Files Be Provided To Requestor?)

• Custom Reports (Based On Task)
• Native Files
• TIFF Files
• PDF Files
• Load Files (Specifics Provided By Requestor)
• Custom Files (Specifics Provided By Requestor)

Data Storage Requirements (How Will The Data Be Stored After Being Acted Upon?)

• Hot - Data is stored in an active state and is immediately accessible to end users.
• Warm - Data is stored in an active state not immediately accessible to end users.
• Cold - Data is stored in a static state.
• Destruct - Data is destroyed.

While not all inclusive and comprehensive, the aforementioned presentation of "definitions, questions, and notes" hopefully has provided at the very least a topical review of things that need to be considered when approaching cases with ESI.   As one begins to understand these considerations, one can then begin to assign economic values (time/money) to the things that it would take to get the data and make it available for all parties involved in a specific matter.   Ranging from extremely general and subjective on one end of the spectrum to very specific and objective on the other, this economic value should serve as the basis for discussing from a position of understanding whether or not ESI is accessible or not-reasonably-accessible from a case specific legal perspective.

References:

• Electronically Stored Information Definition: The Third Branch (Newsletter of the Federal Courts)
• Information Definition:  TechWeb Tech Encyclopedia
• Data Definition:  Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
• Structured and Unstructured Data:  Wikipedia (Data Structure and Unstructured Data)
• Data Format:  Sustainability of Digital Formats Planning for Library of Congress Collections
• Data State:  Precise Cyber Forensics Glossary
• Data Network:  Wikipedia (Computer Networks By Connection Method)
• Data Storage Network:  Wikipedia (Storage Area Networks, Network Attached Storage, Direct Attached Storage)
• Data Storage Media:  Wikipedia (Computer Data Storage)
• Data Volume:  Data Compression University Of California, Irvine.
• Data Encryption:  Barron's Business Directory
• Data Coding:  The Unicode Standard

Pitney Bowes Management Services Launches Records and Information Management Consulting Service | Business Wire

STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pitney Bowes Management Services, Inc. (PBMS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) today officially launched its Records and Information Management (RIM) Consulting Service to help organizations address concerns about records systems controls, risk mitigation, storage management and cost reduction.

Robert Mattis, vice president, Business Development, PBMS, noted that there are several key factors that are driving increased attention to records and information management in businesses today.

“A growing number of customers are facing numerous challenges in developing, implementing and maintaining efficient and effective records management strategies. This is due to recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, an accelerating transition from paper to electronic records processing, auditing to track compliance with regulatory requirements, and the need for strategic planning and direction,” Mattis stated. “Also, corporations are more dynamic now than 10 years ago, with facility relocations and resizings. Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures are also having a significant impact on how companies effectively retain and manage records.”

“Through PBMS’ RIM Consulting Service, we can provide an effectively designed program to help businesses enhance responsiveness, increase customer satisfaction, ensure compliance with industry regulations, demonstrate due diligence and improve overall access to information. PBMS’ RIM Consulting Service provides an in-depth analysis that expands our Document Processing Solutions offering,” he added.

PBMS’ RIM Consulting Service is comprised of five key offerings:

• Records Program Assessments – RIM consultants identify needed components to help ensure an effectively designed program from active/inactive records and retention policies, to recovery plans.
• Technology Reviews and Recommendations – PBMS consultants’ analysis help companies identify methods to manage documents through all phases of their life cycle, to increase efficiency, minimize costs and reduce risk, through introduction of automated records management systems, and records media review and selection.
• Risk Assessments – With enactment of legislation and creation of new laws that affect corporate entities, there is an increased need to demonstrate due diligence and ensure the accuracy and security of the information held in records. Risk assessments consist of operational reviews of risk and compliance to verify procedures are in place and effectively functioning to maintain corporate operations and reduce or prevent any potential loss.
• Facilities Recommendations – The logistics of where and how clients store their records assets has a significant impact on the costs associated with records management. Recommendations encompass facility assessments and design, centralized/decentralized file organizational plan developments, on-site/off-site selection and relocation planning.
• Records Project Work – Addresses concerns associated with downsizing facilities or personnel, mergers and acquisitions, or other budgetary changes that require external resources beyond the scope of internal capabilities. PBMS Consulting Services help customers combine and/or consolidate information while reducing costs, minimizing business disruptions and ensuring regulatory compliance through inventory, purging, converting or consolidation of records collections.

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  Business Wire

eMag Solutions Provides Organizations with Departing Employee Data Capture Program That Minimizes Liability and Limits Loss of Confidential Information | Business Wire

Services will allow corporations to control loss of confidential information and reduce potential legal liability.

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eMag Solutions, LLC, a leading international provider of electronic discovery services and data management solutions, today announced a program for the capture, preservation, and analysis of electronically stored information (ESI) contained on the laptops, computer hard drives, and portable digital devices of departing executives and other employees. The services contained in this program will allow corporations to create a legally defensible forensic image of the devices used by departing employee as part of the exit process and allow the information to be archived for as long as necessary. The company also offers a full range of forensic analysis capabilities that can be used to examine the contents of captured ESI and proactively discover improper activities, deletion or extraction of files, internet sites visited, content downloaded, or a range of other information. This enables companies to save money, limit the loss of confidential information, and reduce the risk of liability from potential lawsuits.

Corporations are most at risk from the theft of trade secrets or confidential information from departing employees who have access to key strategic processes, plans, and technology, and the Departing Employee Data Capture program helps organizations create and enforce policies and controls that can assure protection of confidential information.

"US corporations are estimated to lose billions of dollars from the loss of confidential information and exposure to liability from departing employees,” said Brendan Sullivan, president and CEO of eMag Solutions. "Our program to capture data from departing employees is a very necessary element in ensuring that companies can create a complete set of controls and minimize financial and legal exposure.”

The Departing Employee Data Capture program will also allow human resource departments to defend against a litany of compliance, civil litigation, and wrongful termination suits by providing an analysis of relevant documents and files and identifying any improper activity by departed employees as well as revealing supporting documentation that can demonstrate the organization’s continued compliance or absence of liability.

eMag Solutions delivers comprehensive electronic discovery and data management services, specializing in accessing data from a variety of archived sources through worldwide data centers, providing law firms, corporations, and government clients with proactive and reactive solutions for litigation, regulatory, and compliance matters that dramatically reduce cost, improve accuracy, and accelerate turnaround.

For the complete release, click here.

Source:  Business Wire

Top Three Issues Facing Legal Counsel, CIO Policy Challenges And Intelligent Collection - DCIG

By Joshua L. Konkle

Electronic data discovery interview -  David Baskin, VP of Product Management, Recommind,

David Baskin, Vice President of Product Management, is responsible for the development and delivery of high quality technology products to address the most challenging enterprise search, information management and eDiscovery needs of enterprises, professional service firms and law firms. Mr. Baskin has played a key role with the EDRM Project (www.edrm.net), a highly influential industry group tasked with creating and maintaining standards for the eDiscovery industry.

Joshua Konkle: In your work with corporate legal counsel how do you help them synchronize their policies and their IT, what is the mood of legal counsel out there?

David Baskin: The mood is focused.  In my experience, the General Counsel's (GC) office has several responsibilities.  At Recommind, we have identified the top three as security, review and risk management.  In terms of security, GCs need to understand how it is collected, where it goes, how it is purged and/or returned to them.  Related to security is risk management.  GCs need systems in place to control their external process, law firms and vendors. Each external force introduces risk that must be managed, qualitatively.  Finally, review costs are bleeding legal budgets across the world.  ~70% of matter costs are related to the review of evidence.

Joshua Konkle: One of the most frequently asked questions by CIO's and others worried about the cost of data management is "how long do I have to keep my data, really?"  What do you say when you get asked that question?

David Baskin: Focus, we say let's focus on your industry and what we know can be destroyed.  Each client carries different requirements and regulations.  For example, the Financial Services industry is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  The SEC establishes rules for all financial services companies' business and communication process.  In 2000 they required all financial services companies to retain communications between broker-dealers un