IBM Upgrades Its E-Discovery Software Platforms

IBM, acknowledging a trend that is seeing enterprises upgrade legal search-and-find capabilities within their storage networks, unveiled on Aug. 12 some new analytics features for its InfoSphere eDiscovery Manager and Analyzer software packages.
The three new features are early case-assessment analysis, new APIs to enable better integration into existing systems and support for additional types of content.
Companies such as CA, Kazeon, Autonomy, Clearwell Systems, Guidance, Attenex, Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, Seagate Technology’s MetaLINCS, Iron Mountain’s Stratify, LexisNexis and Recommind have been gaining steady e-discovery business from a surge in litigation as a fallout from the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis. IBM has been in this relatively new software market for only a bit more than a year.
“Gartner Dataquest recently reported that companies will be doubling their in-house vending of e-discovery by 2010,” Aaron Brown, program director of discovery and search information management for IBM’s software division, told eWEEK. “So there’s a big push toward bringing that technology in-house.”
IBM released the initial versions of its eDiscovery Manager and Analyzer offerings in 2008 based on years of work with clients on a “one-off” basis, Brown said.
“So many of these solutions were repeatable that we decided to create our own product line,” Brown said.
“These are designed to solve the problem of how you tie together your information management capability. IBM has to proactively deal with information scattered across the organization,” Brown said. “They have tools to help users respond quickly to e-discovery requests.”
IBM InfoSphere eDiscovery Analyzer utilizes an inference-based search algorithm and other proprietary content analytics to make it possible for organizations to build better strategies before entering into costly legal discovery review and production cycles, Brown said.
For example, Brown said, users can use the tools to visualize e-mail communications patterns across their entire organization to discover unexpected communications, identify new individuals whose information is subject to review, and trace the flow of topics over time.
In addition, the new software expands support for processing, analyzing, searching and holding multiple forms of ESI (electronically stored information) support, including the ability to export processed and analyzed ESI in the industry-standard EDRM
The new APIs that were released Aug. 12 enable users to create customized e-discovery platforms specific to their own businesses, Brown said.
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