Legal pressure for improved eDiscovery
Jinfo Blog

12th February 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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In January Gartner released its predictions for the eDiscovery market entitled Reduce the Cost and Risk of E-Discovery in 2009 (http://digbig.com/4yjsw - US$95). Its major focus? The increased burden put on corporations to have sound data discovery practices that cover both structured and unstructured data sources comes directly from the amount of litigation in the market - and when times are tough, the number of lawsuits increases. A related 2007 survey of US and UK law firms by law firm Fulbright & Jaworski (http://digbig.com/4yjsx) found that more than half of the 303 respondents said their companies had at least one class action lawsuit pending, and 20% of the largest companies had 21-50 lawsuits over with over $20 million at stake. In the period between 2004 and 2007, UK companies experienced significant increases in the number of internal investigations and external regulatory inquiries/investigations. In light of the financial markets meltdown, the regulatory environment is likely to get even more strict in the years to come. Corporations dealing with information overload will be looking for tools to make sure they comply with sound records management practices throughout their organisations, not forgetting that data assets are increasingly found in video and audio formats these days. Ideally, information discovery solutions will be embedded in enterprise infrastructure and/or targeted at specific vertical functions. The January announcement of Autonomy's acquisition of Interwoven (http://digbig.com/4yfka) is a response to this type of customer demand; look for additional mergers in the information discovery and search space through 2009 as bigger players gobble up innovators who can make the implementation of unified enterprise search solutions faster and cheaper.

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