Archive for June, 2008

It’s been quite a couple of weeks in the eDiscovery world. FTI bought Attenex for $88 million. EED buys Daticon (anyone else notice that the press release for that didn’t have one mention of Xiotech, the company that sold Daticon? I called it back in my analyst days - a mid-tier storage provider should not own an eDiscovery service bureau). Steve D’Alencon leaves Kazeon to take over as CMO of CaseCentral. And, my phone rang several times with contacts from the venture capital world checking in for opinions on companies they are considering investments in. Why all the activity? I get the sense that the eDiscovery market is again at a precipice. Hype began around the time of the amendments to the FRCP - and market size projections have been high - I should know, I did one of them

The term Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) has been around for quite some time. Wikipedia defines it as “the practice of applying certain policies to the effective management of information throughout its useful life. This practice has been used by Records and Information Management (RIM) Professionals for over three decades and had its basis in the management of information in paper or other physical forms (microfilm, negatives, photographs, audio or video recordings and other assets).”

We all knew it was coming - there are so many vendors out there that message to eDiscovery that there was bound to be a big round of consolidation. Some shots had already been fired over the bow - Kroll bought Engenium, Autonomy bough Zantaz (which had previously bought SteelPoint), Seagate bought MetaLINCS, and Iron Mountain bought Stratify. Yesterday, it was announced that FTI Consulting bought Attenex. To me, this announcement is notable because Attenex has been a brand associated with the new guard of eDiscovery. The company’s approach to analytics-driven review really opened eyes to the money that can be saved in the review process by using things like concept search and visual analytics. In that sense, the company was a trailblazer.

I’m sitting in a Microsoft Exchange seminar as I type, watching all of the things that information workers can do in their Outlook clients with Exchange 2007. It’s fascinating to see what is possible in terms of collaboration through presence awareness, unified communications, and VOIP. What strikes me most is the notion of complete freedom of information sharing. With that freedom, we can increase the velocity at which information travels between the people that need to utilize it. While this is clearly a step forward, someone needs to raise the caution flag, and I guess I’m just the person to do it. Now, I’m not saying that utilizing these technologies is wrong; on the contrary, I believe that rolling these out to information-intensive workers is critical. But, let’s learn from the past and make sure we have systems in place to manage that information (in a way that continues to let it flow freely).