An End User View of E-Discovery and E-Disclosure

April 21, 2010 - By Rob Robinson
The E-Discovery and E-Disclosure 2010 User Survey from The 451 Group

According to the 451 Group's E-Discovery and E-Disclosure 2010 User Survey, an end user survey of over 150 participants conducted to understand e-discovery usage and trends, 22% of respondents using outside e-discovery products and services selected Applied Discovery as the provider they used. This was the highest ranking for any of the full service provider and the second highest ranking in the entire survey. Additionally, of the 55% of respondents planning to purchase e-discovery software or services in the next twelve months, Applied Discovery was listed as a top performer with 8% of survey end users planning to purchase Applied Discovery services.

Key Survey Findings Include:

• Respondents overwhelmingly performed e-discovery in-house using their own tools and staff.
• Only half had repeatable e-discovery business processes in place or dedicated e-discovery managers in-house.
• More than half plan to purchase e-discovery tools or services in the next year, primarily for records management or legal hold.
• Cost was cited as the leading factor in selecting a vendor or service provider, by 79% of respondents, and also as the leading pain point in using e-discovery vendors and service providers (56%).
• Despite e-discovery vendors promoting fully integrated platforms for offering customers ‘one throat to choke,’ only 23% of respondents cited end-to-end platform functionality as a criteria in selecting vendors – although these same respondents did cite integration and configuration issues as significant pain points.
• No vendor or provider dominated market share in terms of current e-discovery holdings or future purchasing plans.
• Respondents largely rejected the use of cloud technology for e-discovery data (84%), citing unauthorized access to data and security as their greatest concerns.
• User-driven predictions for the e-discovery market include greater enterprise investment in information governance (64%), more standards emerging for e-discovery methodology and ESI handling (55%), greater automation for responsiveness and privilege review (40%), greater pricing pressure on e-discovery vendors and service providers (39%) and reduced reliance on law-firms due to e-discovery in-sourcing (36%).

Key Survey Mentions Include:

Respondents using outside e-discovery products and services utilized a wide variety of vendors and providers – significantly, Guidance Software (23%, mostly among companies of 2,500+ employees), Applied Discovery (22%) and Open Text (20%). Others cracking the 10% mark included Autonomy (18%), CT Summation (17%), Kroll Ontrack (17%), LexisNexis or Concordance (16%), Symantec (16%), AccessData (15%), Iron Mountain-Stratify (14%), Clearwell Systems (13%), EMC-Kazeon (13%), iPro (11%), Fios (10%), iCONECT (10%), PricewaterhouseCoopers (10%) and PSS Systems (10%). There was no critical mass among write-ins for the ‘other’ option.

Serial litigants with 500 or more cases annually most frequently cited AccessData (35%), CT Summation (29%), Guidance (29%), Kroll Ontrack (29%) and, at 24% each, Applied Discovery, Autonomy, LexisNexis, Open Text and Symantec. Examined by industry, the legal sector responded the most overall – 52% had used CT Summation; 30% Applied Discovery or Guidance; 26% iCONECT, iPro or Kroll Ontrack; and 22% AccessData, CaseCentral, Clearwell Systems, DTI Global or LexisNexis. Finance respon­dents most frequently reported using service providers Kroll Ontrack (31%) or Applied Discovery (23%). Energy-sector respondents frequently used Autonomy, Fios, Guid­ance and PSS Systems, with each receiving 23%.

55% of respondents planned to purchase e-discovery software or services in the next 12 months, although their plans were not very revealing – no vendor achieved more than 11% share overall, with the top performers being AccessData (11%), followed by Open Text (9%), Applied Discovery (8%), Autonomy (8%), EMC-Kazeon (8%), Guidance Software (8%) and PSS Systems (8%). The majority of the 37% of respondents marking ‘other’ indicated that they were not sure or were in the process of making a decision.

The legal sector (and high-volume litigants generally) was by far the most likely to have solid shopping plans, although not all had cemented their vendor choices – Applied Discovery, CT Summation, Guidance, iPro and kCura were the most reported, at 13% each.

To view the complete E-Discovery and E-Disclosure 2010 User Survey compliments of Applied Discovery, click here.


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