eDiscovery Daily Blog

New Report from The Aberdeen Group Cites Lack of Advanced Technologies, Offers Recommendations: eDiscovery Trends

While recovering from ILTACON and Vegas, I found an interesting report with some interesting statistics and observations from The Aberdeen Group about how many organizations are handling eDiscovery and what they could be doing better.

The report, Key Strategies to Improve the Performance of eDiscovery Teams, is written by Michael Caton an IT Research Analyst at Aberdeen, who surveyed technology solution users.  Here are some of the observations and statistics included in the report:

  • In terms of technology adoption, 82% of companies surveyed use an eDiscovery solution.
  • Currently, organizations are 50% more likely to use an on-premises solution than a cloud-based solution.
  • While 33% of organizations have implemented a cloud-based solution, organizations plan to implement on-premises and cloud-based technologies in nearly equal numbers – 24% and 27%
  • Just 29% of responding organizations have adopted technology assisted review.
  • The same holds true (no pun intended) for legal hold management – just 29% of organizations have software tools to notify employees of legal hold and to prevent the loss of data that should be subject to eDiscovery.
  • Finally, only 27% of companies employ direct connectors to key systems to automate the collection of data, such as content management applications and communications systems.

The on-premises vs. cloud numbers might be the most surprising to me, given all of the recent numbers and trends that I’ve seen regarding cloud adoption within the eDiscovery industry.  It looks like both implementation methods will have a place in eDiscovery for some time to come.

Caton also provides statistics regarding top business pressures related to eDiscovery, core eDiscovery capabilities in use and eDiscovery technologies with low adoption levels (among other findings).  He provides several recommendations at the end of the document for organizations currently assessing eDiscovery solutions, including evaluating technology assisted review technology, assessing legal hold management solutions, integrating eDiscovery software with critical applications and evaluating cloud or hybrid technologies to simplify onboarding.  I won’t steal all his thunder here – I’ll leave it to you to check out his report here to see additional stats and recommendations (the report is free, with free signup for an Aberdeen membership).

BTW, speaking of on-premise vs. cloud, just a reminder that, on Wednesday, August 30 at noon CST (1:00pm EST, 10:00am PST), CloudNine will conduct the webcast On Premise or Off Premise? A Look at Security Approaches to eDiscovery.  This one-hour webcast will discuss different on-premise and off-premise eDiscovery solution options and considerations for each. I’ll be presenting the webcast, along with eDiscovery thought leader Tom O’Connor.  To register for it, click here.

So, what do you think?  Do you use on-premise, off-premise or a combination for your eDiscovery solution(s)?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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