Proactive Data Management Represents the Future of eDiscovery

The reliance that organizations have upon electronically stored information (ESI) is phenomenal. Not only is ESI the life-giving blood that courses through corporations, ESI is becoming more important in safeguarding and reducing risk as organizations deal with increased litigation. eDiscovery is the process of searching, locating, and securing ESI that is used as evidence in litigation. Any company not complying with a request to perform eDiscovery can incur costly and potentially disastrous side effects.

To help organizations and providers establish best practices around the eDiscovery process, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) was created to help outline the key processes involved for eDiscovery and provide users with a methodology that helps them reduce cost, time, and manual intervention.

The recent Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery survey identified the need for standards as the number one issue affecting the industry of eDiscovery. The results from this survey acted as a catalyst in the creation of the EDRM and continue to drive the EDRM in the update and expansion of the processing model for eDiscovery. Ongoing developments within the EDRM is supported by a group of users, corporate legal teams, IT managers, law firms, consultants, service providers, and emerging software providers such as CommVault.

Over the last couple years, CommVault has emerged as a major player in the eDiscovery marketplace. CommVault focuses on advanced data management technologies that index and manage data as it is created which drives improved information access and search methodologies within organizations. CommVault's decision to participate in both the EDRM and The Sedona Conference RFP+ Vendor Panel is driven by what it sees as a need to clearly differentiate itself in the marketplace with its strategy of proactively indexing data while helping to educate the industry as a whole about new and improved methods to perform e-discoveries. The CommVault® Simpana® suite consists of a breadth of capabilities though its most notable features include:

1. Content indexing all data that it touches. Taking this approach, data is managed more holistically from a data management point of view so it does not limit eDiscovery to strictly searching archived data as other eDiscovery tools often do.
2. The indexing technology used by the Simpana suite is highly federated. This enables it to link multiple sites together for a coordinated global eDiscovery. The search is executed across all of the sites through a single, common interface.
3. Faster data processing. The speed and ease at which CommVault can perform eDiscovery, find data, and process it for legal hold, retention, and authentication is considerably faster than competing products.
4. Advanced legal hold capabilities. Data preservation, for a defined period and against specific search criteria, is the key requirement for legal hold. This is achieved by controlling data and maintaining its authenticity. The CommVault Simpana software uses a policy based methodology where data is indexed at the point of capture to guarantee authenticity and consistency from search to preservation.

Yet what is undoubtedly the biggest differentiator that CommVault brings to the table, and most notable reason for CommVault participating in the EDRM, is its emphasis on how companies should perform e-discoveries. eDiscovery is typically done forensically after a request for an eDiscovery is received by the company. This forces an organization to respond reactively by searching its archived data stores. This approach limits search speeds, increases costs, and reduces a company's effectiveness in accessing and data searched and then forces it to introduce new procedures to hold and manage the data after it is located. In contrast, CommVault's proactive implementation of building indexes as part of key processes within an organization, such as backup processing or archiving, shifts organizations from a reactive to a proactive mindset of data management by enabling them to perform e-discoveries if and when eDiscovery requests are received.

Attacking instead of responding to e-discoveries represents a fundamental shift in the way that most people think about eDiscovery. But to bring about this change in thinking will not happen by accident. It is only through providers like CommVault participating in the EDRM, educating end-users about these new eDiscovery methods and then end-users adopting products that manage data from cradle-to-grave in a risk-averse manner will such a change ever occur.