5 Technology Businesses Poised to Boom in the Financial Crisis

3. E-Discovery

Companies such as CA, Kazeon, Autonomy, Clearwell Systems, Attenex, Hewlett Packard Software, Symantec, Seagate Technology's MetaLINCS, Iron Mountain's Stratify, LexisNexis, Recommind and some other smaller companies stand to gain business from what many expect to be a surge in litigation surrounding the Wall Street financial crisis.

When lawyers show up in the front lobby, and if their complaint becomes actual litigation, the courts will want to see that an enterprise has corporatewide policies and processes in place to facilitate the discovery of all information—digital and non-digital—relevant to the case. It's now the law.

Electronic records management software has become a strategic tool for organizations due to increasing national and regional regulations such as the 2006 additions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Data Protection and Freedom of Information acts.

E-discovery itself is the process by which records are gathered and processed for litigation. This includes anything digital: word processing files, photos, e-mail, audio and video files, instant messaging transcripts, Internet bookmarks, and even data center users' logs.

The amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (the second anniversary of their implementation by the Supreme Court is coming up Dec. 1) clearly require enterprises to be responsible for keeping close tabs on all their own corporate records and communications—as well as personal communications created during business hours and/or on business or personal computers. Preordained policies must be in place for storage, security and accessibility of the information.

Often, companies being sued are given only 30 to 60 days to produce such evidence or else face stiff fines and court costs until the information is produced.

Expect financial firms to start calling on e-discovery experts as lawyers appear on their horizon.

For a more comprehensive look at the e-discovery industry in the wake of the financial crisis, click here.

4. E-mail archiving

Companies that offer quick access to archived files, such as Mimosa, Hewlett Packard Software, CopperEye, Zantaz, Atempo, Azaleos, Webroot, ArcMail, Google's Postini, GlobalRelay, Iron Mountain's LiveVault, Quantum, CommVault and MessageOne, also will be getting attention.

Some offer hosted and client/server products; some deal in tape and in disk storage; and some offer physical appliances and/or server software. The choices are many.

5. Enterprise search

Leaders in this sector include Autonomy, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Exalead, Vivisimo, Fast, Endeca, Coveo and Omniture.  

Enterprise search is a good tool to have in a litigation; however, most of the e-discovery companies certainly have this well-covered within their own product/service packages.