IBM added some fresh intellectual
property and expertise in the growing e-discovery space on Oct. 13 by acquiring
PSS Systems, a privately held company
based in Mountain View, Calif.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
PSS Systems' Atlas software platform, designed for use by corporate counsel and
IT management at large enterprises, enables companies to analyze their body of
corporate information to automate governance and compliance policies across
massive amounts of data.
Atlas helps companies identify the legal duties they have and the value of the
information they have, and tie that to where and how the data is managed,
President and CEO Deidre Paknad told eWEEK in a Sept. 3 interview.
The applications within Atlas also help legal departments and IT managers get
rid of outdated company information in an automated, policy-driven manner.
Because there is less data to save, this timely disposal of old data helps keep
storage maintenance costs down.
PSS, founded in 2004, currently has more than 210,000 active holds under
management involving more than 15 million custodians. Atlas is used by seven of
the Fortune 10 companies.
IBM and PSS Systems had been working together on legal compliance for the Bank
of America for a number of months.
CEO saw a legal 'sea change' on the horizon
"In late 2003, I saw an opportunity emerging on the horizon, and that was
what I believed to be a sea change in the evidence obligations that legal
departments faced, from paper obligations to all electronic information,"
Paknad told eWEEK.
"At the same time, the volume of data at companies was growing like crazy,
and I thought, 'There's going to be a convergence, maybe even a train wreck, in
the future, and here's an opportunity to help companies do a better job of
managing those obligations and managing data volume.'"
In the past, poor visibility and ad hoc controls have caused companies to
over-retain information and significantly overspend on information management,
litigation and e-discovery, Paknad said.
A recent study by the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Council found that fewer
than 25 percent of organizations are able to dispose of data properly
because they lack rigorous legal hold management practices and effective record
retention programs.
The report also estimates that that costs associated with legal electronic
discovery average more than $3 million per case and that about 70 percent of
information is often needlessly retained.
IBM plans to combine the Atlas package with its Information Lifecycle
Governance software, said Ron Ercanbrack, vice president of enterprise content
management at IBM.
This will give IBM a "comprehensive portfolio of offerings that address
clients needs to manage, automate and apply policies to address the
interlocking needs of the CLO, CIO and lines-of-business constituents,"
said Ercanbrack.
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