More consolidation in eDiscovery space
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.
Attenex primarily went to market through service providers – and FTI was one of those channel partners. I would have to believe that the acquisition will negatively affect other channel relationships. But, the real win here is for FTI, who gets good analytics to add to its Ringtail review platform (assuming it integrates the Ringtail and Attenex technology) and gets it at a nice price – in my analyst days, I expected Attenex to sell for $150M (versus the $88M that FTI paid).
Now, the analytic-driven review market has only two main pure-plays left – Clearwell and Recommind. It’s only a matter of time before they get snapped up (HP, IBM?). Meanwhile, archiving companies like Mimosa have the pleasure of partnering with these review players so that we can give our customers the option to seamlessly get data into these platforms without any processing costs (watch for more from Mimosa on this soon).
Watching the consolidation is fun – what do you think is next? Let me know…
