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The Cost of E-Discovery

Posted by Paul Travis on May 9, 2009

Tags: Backup & Recovery,  Cloud Storage,  Content Management,  E-discovery,  Enterprise Search,  Storage Management

Channel: Content Management, E-discovery, Enterprise Search, Storage & Mgmt

By Paul Travis, October 8, 2008, NOON

There are few words that frighten corporate executives or storage managers more than "lawsuit" and "e-discovery," since one usually leads to the other. Both can be costly, even if e-discovery works the way it is suppose to work and your company ends up winning the lawsuit.

Businesses and other organizations spent more than $2.7 billion on electronic data discovery last year, and spending on EDD will grow to more than $4.6 billion by 2010, according to consultants George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, who presented their Sixth Annual Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey in a report published earlier this year on Law.com.

The good news? "Better and earlier analysis of electronically stored information means a greater ability to successfully navigate the EDD whitewater," said the consultants, who see a shift in the market from a services-based approach to one where improved software used by companies in-house and by law firms and service providers plays a greater role.

Storage, software, and search vendors know a good market when they see it, and more vendor pitches tout the ability of their products and services to help with e-discovery. That's a change from a few years ago when they were offering products to help companies comply with SEC regulations and Sarbanes-Oxley rules, according to Arun Taneja, head of analyst firm Taneja Group .