Why did make such a big impact, and why now? The answer may lie in the fact that as law firms and in-house counsel engage in the identification, collection and processing of electronic evidence, they are experiencing significant challenges in the centralization, management and preservation of the information.

APPLICATION:

As way of background, it has been roughly five years since as part of amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). eDiscovery data, often referred to as electronically stored information (ESI), is digital data identified, collected and placed on legal hold as digital evidence until it is analyzed using procedures in preparation for various types of legal matters and court proceedings.

eDiscovery is hard to get right, and, to make matters worse, the sheer and the number of data sources continues to grow exponentially. In a recent IDC report sponsored by EMC, the research firm forecasted that, by the end of this year, the volume of data created annually is expected to exceed 1.8 zettabytes, having grown by a factor of nine over the previous five years. That number is anticipated to increase to 35 zettabytes created annually by 2020.

That, of course, is a big challenge for inside counsel, law firms and lawyers who will need to securely store and then make sense of the data collected. This is a likely reason why 32 vendors at the conference provide document management and/or document storage products and services. An interesting side point is that the products and services offered by 11 of these firms are either cloud-enabled or cloud-based.