Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA P F

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1 Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA P F E X C E R P T I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e S t a n d a l o n e E a r l y C a s e A s s e s s m e n t A p p l i c a t i o n s V e n d o r A n a l y s i s Vivian Tero I N T H I S E X C E R P T The content for this excerpt was taken directly from the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Standalone Early Case Assessment Applications 2011 Vendor Analysis by Vivian Tero (Doc # ). All or parts of the following sections are included in this excerpt: IDC Opinion, In This Study, Situation Overview, Future Outlook, Essential Guidance, and Synopsis. Also included is Figure 1. I D C O P I N I O N This IDC MarketScape document examines the standalone early case assessment (ECA) applications, commonly deployed in multi-vendor, multi-platform ediscovery environments. This research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that explain a vendor's success in this emerging product category. Early case assessment is a collaborative business process during ediscovery. Early case assessment applications incorporate search, text analytics, business process workflow automation, and case and project management capabilities in a single product. The evaluation in this IDC MarketScape study is based on a comprehensive framework and a set of parameters that are expected to underpin demand for these products during both the short term and the long term. Key findings include: Overall, in spite of the spacing on the IDC MarketScape graphic, all of these products performed very well on this assessment. All of these vendor offerings deliver the core business process management, data harvesting, search, and analytics features. Differences in ease of application deployment, configuration and integration, and the ability to support complex workflows, in combination with differences in the current and planned capabilities around application delivery, and advanced connectivity, data harvesting and analytics, case management, and integration with third-party applications in the electronic discovery reference model (EDRM), influenced a vendor's overall ranking relative to the vendor's competition. The maturity of business and go-to-market strategies and capabilities were also critical considerations. Potential buyers of standalone ECA applications should not immediately conclude that products in the Leaders and Major Players sections are the most suitable, and therefore should not automatically include these products in their short lists while excluding products in the Contenders section. The buyer organization's legal counsel, ediscovery project team, and IT organization should carefully consider their litigation profile as well as their organizational and technical resources and constraints. Filing Information: September 2011, IDC #229928e : Excerpt

2 The Appendix section of this IDC MarketScape document provides a tabular summary of the capabilities available in the version of the ECA products that were evaluated for this document. This could serve as a starting point for buyers that are looking to create their short lists and develop their RFPs. I N T H I S S T U D Y This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the standalone early case assessment applications market through the IDC MarketScape model. Early case assessment is a collaborative business process during ediscovery. At the outset of a litigation event, the in-house counsel, the outside counsel, and the business client collaborate to assemble the pertinent information in order to take as informed and disciplined a decision as possible, at that time, concerning the handling of the legal matter. ediscovery is a business process, where the technical controls for data management and business workflow automation are supported by the integration of various technologies. Automating core activities in the early case assessment process takes advantage of search, text analytics and data mining, business process workflow automation, project management, and decision support features. Over the past three years, vendors have been offering up these features in a single product. These products are increasingly referred to as "early case assessment" applications. This IDC MarketScape covers a variety of vendors and assesses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that define success in this emerging product category. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses each vendor relative to the criteria and to one another. The framework highlights the factors expected to be the most influential for success in the market in both the short term and the long term. The document concludes with IDC's essential guidance to both vendors and buyers of ECA applications. The guidance is designed to provide insights for continued growth and improvement of ECA application offerings. M e t h o d o l o g y This IDC MarketScape document examines the standalone early case assessment (ECA) applications market. IDC MarketScape criteria selection, weightings, and vendor scores represent well-researched IDC judgment about the market and selected vendors. IDC analysts tailor the range of standard characteristics by which vendors are measured through structured discussions, surveys, and interviews with market Leaders, Participants, and end users. Market weightings are based on user interviews, buyer surveys, and the input of a review board of IDC experts in each market. IDC analysts base individual vendor scores, and ultimately vendor positions within the IDC MarketScape, on detailed surveys and interviews with the vendors, publicly available information, and end-user experiences in an effort to provide an 2 #229928e 2011 IDC

3 accurate and consistent assessment of each vendor's characteristics, behavior, and capability. Phase 1: Defining the Product Category and Core Attributes At the start of this IDC MarketScape study, IDC identified over 30 vendors that claim to have ECA offerings and invited them to complete a simple survey. To objectively determine the final list of ECA applications for inclusion in this document, the ECA product offerings were evaluated on the following attributes: The ECA product offering was not a resell or OEM product from another vendor. Features and functionalities should address current and evolving use cases for supporting the early case assessment and conflict resolution process. Historically, the early case assessment process took place post-collection and post-processing. But in light of developments in search, data mining, text analytics, and storage technologies, litigant organizations today have an opportunity to conduct internal investigations and audit, data assessment, and risk analysis very early on. This research assesses the ability of the ECA software to support these evolving use cases. The product is a standalone ECA offering, delivered on-premise (as standalone software or through an appliance behind the organization's firewall) or as a cloudbased product (through an application provider or a third-party hosting partner). Further: The on-premise ECA software should have an open architecture and support integration with multiple third-party applications and systems. Increasingly, archiving and enterprise content management platforms are offering ECA modules as part of their end-to-end ediscovery offering. ECA software that require electronically stored information (ESI) from distributed systems to be ingested into a vendor's proprietary content management, records management, storage, or archiving platform are excluded from this document. Cloud-based ECA software should be a discrete product. Vendors of the hosted ECA applications typically offer legal review and production platforms. To meet the IDC criteria, the hosted ECA applications that are included in this document should have their own SKU and must appear as a separate line item from the vendor's legal review and production platform offering. Vendors that provide the ECA capabilities as a feature of their legal review platform are therefore excluded from this document. IDC views ediscovery as a business process, where the technical controls for data management and business workflow automation are supported by the integration of various technologies. The core ediscovery technologies include the following functional markets: archiving, enterprise content management (which includes document management, capture, and records management), search and discovery, and security applications. There are two main technology architecture approaches for automating these core processes end to end (including the early case assessment process): 2011 IDC #229928e 3

4 Single-vendor platform approach Multi-vendor, multi-platform, hybrid architecture (For more on this, see the Early Case Assessment Technology Architecture section in this document.) In setting these parameters for the IDC MarketScape on standalone early case assessment applications, IDC offers a way for potential buyers of ediscovery solutions to compare products with similar capabilities and architectural approaches. With this approach, IDC intends to address a common challenge facing potential buyers of ediscovery technologies today: comparing archiving and content management versus search versus forensic software versus legal review applications. IDC posits that potential buyers of ediscovery technologies should first evaluate the appropriate IT architecture for their ediscovery program. An analysis of its current IT capabilities and the organization's overall IT architecture strategy will point to the technology and process gaps, and the appropriate solution. Future IDC MarketScape studies that will evaluate archiving- and content management centric early case assessment solutions and legal review platforms are currently under consideration. Phase 2: Field Work and Competitive Analysis The ECA applications that met the defined product criteria were invited to complete an in-depth questionnaire on the current product capabilities and architecture, business, and go-to-market execution, as well as on future product strategy and business growth plans. Also, each vendor was asked to provide three to five reference customers. In late spring, IDC conducted in-depth discussions with these customers to solicit feedback on their experience with the product and the overall customer service. To encourage frank and honest comments, vendors were not allowed to participate in the customer meetings. Customers were also advised that individual comments will not be cited in the document nor shared with the vendors. IDC also references, in addition to customer comments, the results from IDC's 2010 Corporate ediscovery Technology Trends Survey. Summaries of the customers' comments and quantitative survey findings are included in the section that discusses the product's strengths and weaknesses in the individual vendor profile. Prior to the publication of the IDC MarketScape document, vendors were given the opportunity to review and respond to their individual profiles and final scores. IDC MarketSca pe Sc or in g and Ra nking The IDC MarketScape document utilizes a scoring and ranking model based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria. The in-depth responses to the survey and customer feedback are utilized to assess each vendor relative to the defined qualitative and quantitative criteria. (For more information, see the Market Strategies section of this document). 4 #229928e 2011 IDC

5 S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W I n t r o d u c t i o n : D e f i n i n g S t a n d a l o n e E a r l y C a s e A s s e s s m e n t A p p l i c a t i o n s This IDC MarketScape document examines the standalone early case assessment applications, commonly deployed in multi-vendor, multi-platform ediscovery environments. Early case assessment applications incorporate search, text analytics, business process workflow automation, and case and project management capabilities in a single product. ECA applications are typically employed by the organization's computer forensics and security, paralegal, attorneys, and compliance and risk management functions to search and analyze unstructured data from distributed data stores such as desktops, laptops, servers, and network file shares, as well as content management systems, records management systems, collaborative applications (such as MS SharePoint and Lotus Domino Team Rooms), messaging servers and gateways, backup media, and archiving systems. Unlike attorney legal review and production applications (or linear review platforms), ECA applications are employed by a legal counsel to conduct a thorough front-end look of the ESI collected, instead of just the ESI that has been filtered, processed, and uploaded to the review tool. At a high level, ECA applications provide the following technical features: Search, query, and analytics. Different ECA applications offer varying levels of analytics capabilities, which may include one or several of the following: Boolean/keyword search, text analytics, sentiment and relationship extraction, concept and entity extraction, and clustering and categorization. The advanced analytics capabilities can be very useful in understanding key topics and relationships across large collection sets as well as in driving efficiencies in the process, analysis, and first-pass review process through bulk coding, tagging, keyword black lists and hit lists, and deduplication. Search management, library, and support for ediscovery workflows (such as bulk tagging, workflows to automate collection, preservation in place, and export to document review tools). These features enable the legal counsel to manage the ESI more efficiently and consistently; document the search, data analysis, and tagging; and leverage and reuse relevant work products from similar matters (where it is appropriate). These capabilities are also crucial for standardizing and automating core ediscovery business processes, including those for early case assessment. Since ediscovery and investigations involve tight coordination between IT and the legal/compliance functions, the workflows should support these activities and facilitate hand-offs and communications across these teams. Support for integration with third-party data stores such as archiving, records management, content management, and collaborative applications Support for the creation and management of cases, as well as ESI and custodian data across multiple matters. The ECA applications should feature granular rolebased security including compliance reporting and audit trails IDC #229928e 5

6 Integration with third-party tools that facilitate project and cost management, ediscovery budget forecasting and billing, and legal review. ediscovery is an iterative process. Project management features enable the user to determine the status of multiple preservation and collection activities and reallocate resources as circumstances change. Budgeting, cost management, and forecasting features enable the user to adjust forecasts on the costs of ediscovery and document review as facts of the matter evolve. Support for the seamless export of the relevant data sets to multiple third-party review platforms Reports, activities log, business rules, workflows, and admin tools that support defensibility of the ediscovery and early case assessment process F U T U R E O U T L O O K S i z e a n d G r o w t h o f t h e S t a n d a l o n e E C A A p p l i c a t i o n s M a r k e t IDC sized the revenue for the standalone ECA applications at $281 million in The top 5 vendors, by revenue, accounted for 71% of total revenue during this period. Given the reported revenue growth of the market Leaders in the first half of 2011, IDC forecasts revenue for the standalone ECA applications market will total $400.8 million in 2011 and would reach $857.0 million in The following developments will underpin customer demand and influence the product development, innovation, and go-to-market dynamics for these products: The digital universe continues to grow aggressively, fueled by increased digitization, new applications, mobile smart devices, new IT architecture models. IDC sized the amount of information created and replicated in 2011 will surpass 1.8 trillion gigabytes. (For more on this, see The 2011 IDC Digital Universe Study: Extracting Value from Chaos, sponsored by EMC Corp.). As average corpus sizes per matter continue to grow, more corporate litigants will look to advances in analytics and business process technologies to realize process efficiencies and enhance ediscovery strategy response planning. This development opens up opportunities to disrupt existing paradigms in early case assessment and the overall ediscovery business processes. These technologies will continue to disrupt existing pricing and licensing models for ediscovery software and services. The ability to disrupt existing business process and leverage these enhances to refine legal and ediscovery response strategies will provide vendors with a competitive differentiation. I D C M a r k e t S c a p e S t a n d a l o n e E C A A p p l i c a t i o n s V e n d o r A s s e s s m e n t Figure 6 shows each ECA application vendor's position in the vendor assessment chart. A vendor's market share is indicated by the size of the bubble, and a (+), (-), or 6 #229928e 2011 IDC

7 () icon indicates the vendor's revenue growth performance relative to the overall market growth. The subsequent section profiles the vendors that are included in this IDC MarketScape document. F I G U R E 6 I D C M a r k e t S c a p e f o r S t a n d a l o n e E C A A p p l i c a t i o n s Source: IDC, 2011 V e n d o r S u m m a r y A n a l y s i s Digital Reef P r o d u c t N a m e : D i g i t a l R e e f e D i s c o v e r y Venture-funded Digital Reef was founded 2007 and launched the Digital Reef ediscovery product in The Boxborough, Massachusetts based company has 2011 IDC #229928e 7

8 raised $30 million in funding from Matrix Partners and Pilot House Ventures. Digital Reef is rated as a Leader in this IDC MarketScape. The Digital Reef application can be deployed on-premise using commodity hardware or as a hosted application through the Digital Reef Discovery Center, an outside law firm partner, or through the vendor's network of litigation support service partners. Digital Reef 4.x includes native integration with third-party applications, Exterro (for legal hold process management), and kcura Relativity and kcura Method for (legal review and production). Customers can choose to deploy Digital Reef on-premise, use Digital Reef as a hosted service, or both. Digital Reef's decision, in early 2011, to narrow Digital Reef's focus from the broader information governance opportunities to Digital Reef's growing ediscovery business led to some staff turnover. Several customers expressed concerns over these developments, although they have noted that this has not impacted customer service. Management indicated that they have picked up their hiring pace to support the change in strategy. P r o d u c t S t r e n g t h s Speed and scale in building out an index. The architecture does not rely on a single index or database, thus there are no upper limits for indexing, search, and analysis. The application builds a series of lightweight data representations that may be built, searched, and analyzed in parallel, yet presented to the user as a single collection of records. Competitive and transparent pricing model. Digital Reef offers both subscriptionand volume-based pricing, hosted through third-party hosting providers and Digital Reef's own datacenters. Customers find the on-premise license as one of the most competitive options available. Also, Digital Reef's hosted pricing (based on a per-gb model) does not charge at ingestion, but is based on the output. Digital Reef also does not compete with its hosting partners as only overflow capacity demand is funneled onto the vendor's own datacenters. Although enterprises and tier 1 legal service providers dominate their current client base, Digital Reef management indicated plans to make the application easier to consume for SMB customers and service partners. Clustering and threading capabilities, the flexible application deployment model, and out-of-the-box integration with third-party applications along the EDRM ecosystem, which are often cited by customers as strong features of the application A r e a s f o r P r o d u c t I m p r o v e m e n t The Digital Reef workflows are highly flexible and can support granular customization; but non-heavy users may struggle with designing the workflows and interface. Customers have also noted a need to simplify the user interface and minimize the number of steps required to perform common repetitive tasks. The following analytics features are not available in the current release of the application: sampling prior to endpoint collection, truncation, and real-time and 8 #229928e 2011 IDC

9 iterative sampling of search results. Management indicated plans to introduce new advanced analytics features in the 2H11 and 2012 releases. E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E G u i d a n c e f o r B u y e r O r g a n i z a t i o n s ediscovery Organizational Maturity and Architecture Considerations 2011 is the first year when IDC has published an IDC MarketScape document for the standalone early case assessment applications market. This IDC document is designed to help CIOs, corporate legal counsel, compliance officers, and legal service providers understand the key capabilities, the evolving use cases, and market and technology dynamics for the early case assessment solutions and the broader ediscovery market segment. As stated in the initial segments of this document, IDC views ediscovery and early case assessment as business processes. The technical controls for data management and business workflow automation are supported by the integration of various technologies, including archiving, enterprise content management (which includes document management, capture, and records management), search and discovery, and security applications. Buyers should first decide on their long-term architecture strategy for ediscovery (single-vendor ediscovery platform versus multi-vendor hybrid ediscovery solution). When selecting the solutions and architecture for automating key activities in the early case assessment process, IDC recommends that potential customers consider the following: Ensure that the architecture for automating the ediscovery business process (including the early case assessment activities) is a function of an organization's: Broader Information governance process and technology maturity ediscovery response business process and technology maturity Litigation profile Broader IT infrastructure strategy Broader enterprise risk management strategy Operational and budget constraints Evaluate the process, technology, and organizational maturity of the organization's information governance program. Identify existing and planned IT investments in the context of the IT organization's IT architecture (application, hardware, network, database, operating systems, and security strategies). For example, if the organization has a broader cloud computing, virtualization, and datacenter rearchitecture initiative, what IT constraints and requirements do these impose on future investments for ediscovery programs? 2011 IDC #229928e 9

10 Identify and prioritize the process and technical gaps, as well as budget and operational constraints in the existing ediscovery program. For example, what are the priorities of the ediscovery response and legal hold initiatives? These elements will help determine the appropriate ediscovery IT architecture model. In collaboration with core program management team (legal, IT, outside counsel, compliance), develop an RFP checklist using information from the gap analysis and broader IT strategy infrastructure requirements. Prioritize the features and capabilities needed to support the ediscovery program. Understand business process and technology gaps in the organization's current early case assessment practice. Where would you like to take this practice in two to five years? What improvements to existing practices would you like to accomplish (disrupt the linear review model, assess legal risks faster, use data mining and analytics to improve legal strategy, etc.)? What are the emerging content stores and application types where the organization may have to conduct ediscovery? Work very closely with the application provider to develop use cases and workflows that could help the organization lower overall ediscovery project costs and improve its legal risk management strategy. Guidance for Potential Buyers of Standalone ECA Applications The Appendix section of this IDC MarketScape document provides a tabular summary of the product capabilities available in the version of the ECA products that were evaluated for this document. This should serve as a starting point for buyers that are looking to create their short lists and develop their RFPs. Overall, in spite of the spacing on the IDC MarketScape graphic, all of these firms performed very well on this assessment. Potential buyers of standalone ECA applications should not immediately conclude that products in the Leaders and Major Players sections are the most suitable, and therefore should not automatically include these products in their short lists. The buyer organization's legal counsel, ediscovery project team, and IT organization should carefully consider their litigation profile as well as their organizational and technical resources and constraints. Examples of critical attributes that influence a buyer's litigation profile include: Types of legal matter Most popular and frequently sourced data stores Average volume of ESI per matter Average number of matters per year Average duration for each matter Average duration when ESI is on legal hold Average number of custodians in a single matter Number of custodians typically involved in multiple concurrent matters 10 #229928e 2011 IDC

11 Volume of ESI typically involved in concurrent matters Number of concurrent users of the application Maturity of the buyer's ediscovery and search strategy Maturity of the buyer's internal investigations, data collections, and compliance programs Preferences in application delivery models Data segregation requirements (critical in international ediscovery scenarios) IDC offers the following observations about current customers of these ECA applications: Buyers that require solutions that could support the automation of highly complex workflows, cross-collaboration, and decision analysis, across very large, complex, multi-matter scenarios, and have fairly advanced ediscovery and search practices (or have ambitions to advance the maturity of their ediscovery programs) will most likely gravitate to the market Leaders. Buyers that have ambitions to deploy a highly automated single-vendor ediscovery platform solution are also most likely to gravitate to these solutions. Buyers that have existing investments and best practices in internal investigations and collections have an opportunity to leverage these investments and protocols to support ediscovery and early case assessment business processes. These buyers are likely to gravitate to the market Leaders and market Major Players in this IDC MarketScape. Buyer organizations with less complex data management, business process management, and case management requirements, as well as those that deal with a smaller number of legal matters per year and have smaller ESI volumes per matter, yet still demand advanced analytics, ECA business process workflow automation, and ECA case management capabilities tend to gravitate to the Contenders. Examples of scenarios with less complex data management needs include litigants that do not have to regularly conduct ediscovery and early case analysis involving esoteric and custom content types, MS SharePoint, rich media content, and support multiple foreign language search and analysis. Litigants that also do not have a need for conducting advanced social analysis would also fit this criterion. S y n o p s i s This IDC study examines the standalone early case assessment (ECA) applications, commonly deployed in multi-vendor, multi-platform ediscovery environments. This research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that explain a vendor's success in this emerging product category. "Standalone early case assessment applications incorporate search, data harvesting, text analytics, business process workflow automation, and case and project management capabilities in a single product," says Vivian Tero, program director, 2011 IDC #229928e 11

12 GRC Infrastructure Research with IDC. "Overall, these vendors deliver the core features needed to facilitate the ediscovery business process. It is the differences in the architecture, as well as current and planned capabilities for automating complex business process, business analysis, and data management needs, that influence a vendor's overall ranking relative to the vendor's competition." C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and conferences. Visit to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit Please contact the IDC Hotline at , ext (or ) or sales@idc.com for information on applying the price of this document toward the purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights. Copyright 2011 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved. 12 #229928e 2011 IDC