A new electronic discovery tool from MetaLincs aims to provide "big picture" search and indexing features.MetaLincs this week will unveil its new Web-services-based MetaLincs E-Discovery application.
The software presents customers with a visual representation of the relationships between people, time, documents, events and communication patterns based on appropriate context and search criteria, said Chuck Williams, chief technology officer of MetaLincs Corp., in Mountain View, Calif.
With more and more enterprises finding themselves under intense scrutiny due to regulatory compliance mandates and litigation pressures, e-mail and document discovery is fast becoming a labor-intensive proposition laced with inconsistency and a small margin of error.
According to St. Paul, Minn., company Socha Consulting LLC, electronic service providers will charge $1.1 billion this year. The company says that number will grow to $1.9 billion next year.
The rising cost of outsourced specialized services to satisfy e-discovery demands is leading many customers to search for affordable automated in-house capabilities they can manage and run themselves, analysts say.
"One of the largest challenges facing organizations having to deal with electronic discovery is the sheer volume of data," said George Socha, president of Socha.
"What [MetaLincs] is offering is a set of analytic tools to help companies more quickly home in on, visualize and prioritize volumes of information that matters most. Using their tools ... you can much more rapidly ascertain who is indicating what about a subject, perhaps even draw some conclusions about why," added Socha.
MetaLincs E-Discovery analysis software features indexing, processing, search, review, reporting and production functions. The products Visual Analysis capabilities target People Analysis and Thread Analysis.
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People Analysis enables users to display a network of the most important people involved with the subject matter in question and the communication patterns for any topic.
This can reveal any unexpected parties that have access to sensitive information and help guide investigators or auditors toward any relevant conversations.
"[The E-Discovery software] is about seeing the big picture," Williams said. "It analyzes the results of who is the most important person receiving and creating content on that topic in the company.
"You can see who theyre talking to and exactly what theyre saying—its architected for analysis to give you much easier access to important information without having to do intensive view processes."
By contrast, the applications Thread Analysis functionality identifies complete sets of threads associated with any topic and organizes them into groups of as many as five related threads, or side conversations.
A Related Concepts component within MetaLincs E-Discovery application automatically suggests additional keywords and phrases to help speed the query and investigation process.
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Other features include Collaboration; Multi-Dimensional Search; Dynamic Directory, which categorizes results into eight dimension areas; and a Document Acquisition Engine, to extract data and files from multiple sources and corporate directories, Williams said.
The package is available now for $100,000.
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