Oracle Open World --- TBD Later

Yesterday I spent the day at Oracle Open World, their giant event covering downtown San Francisco. I'll go into more detail in some of the lessons learned there. Unfortunately, I'm also currently battling a cold, so analysis will have to wait till next week.

Edit: I thought that last week I'd be able to find more to dig out of the Oracle convention, but there's really not much to parse out here that was relevant to e-Discovery or general records management that would break the trends. There continues to be the feeling that data is continuing to grow for companies, and that they need more storage (always more!) -- and of course Oracle should be meeting that need. The focus was less on the ability to reduce the amount of storage (which would cut into sales), but on availability and speed of storage (which differentiates the company). I think reducing data is a key point to pound home here, but that's not going to be in the best interest of most of the parties involved in the Oracle World.

De-Duping Data

Yesterday I wrote a little bit about how you can stack DVDs. Well, the next logical challenge here is to reduce the size of data, especially redundant data. According to the same IDC report 75% of the world's data is a copy -- meaning only 25% is unique! Think of all the plastic we could save.

Well, this calls for the ability to get rid of all the replicated data in a process of de-duplication, or what I like to call Single Instance Storaging (SIS). Now, the intracies of SISing over an entire database can be quite cumbersome. Imagine trying to access each database, fileshare, or hard drive over a network. SISing over an archive can also be challenging as well, if solutions do not deploy the right architecture. Because of poor source code, many solutions cannot seamlessly scale one archive to fit an entire Fortune 1000-level corporation.

However, it is necessary to ensure that all the files are stored in one virtual vault, otherwise it is impossible to achieve true SIS. And without true SIS, how do enterprises cut down on that 75%?

True SIS also lends itself to legal concerns; when a legal hold needs to be put in place, in-house counsel can guarantee that there is only one document, and that it is being preserved.

FTW: Pro-eDiscovery For The Win

Check out this recent announcement by the State of Florida. Adam Sand, eDiscovery guru, covers it in this post on The Modern Archivist. He makes some good points on the general direction in which eDiscovery is going, namely that there are more and more sources of data which are being considered to be relevant, and social media sits right on the the same frontier that email and other electronically stored information (ESI) only a few years ago. This relates directly to the Technology Adoption Curve, something I vaguely remember from my days at Wharton: 

• Innovators tend to be more educated and prosperous, with a greater tolerance for risk
• Early adopters are younger, educated, and active in the community
• Early majority are more conservative, but open to new ideas and influential within the community
• Late majority may be older, less educated, conservative, and less socially active
• Laggards are highly conservative, oldest and least educated. They often are less prosperous and more risk averse

In terms of eDiscovery and total information governance, I think we are looking at a major reset in the business over the last few years. Although there have been many point solutions to handle the EDRM model, there have exist few truly all-encompassing solutions that can take a company from the information management side to production and move seamlessly back and forth (please refer to the EDRM model below). The move from Reactive eDiscovery to Proactive eDiscovery has changed the landscape of the business.

What this fundamental reset means is that we've seen a reboot in the Technology Adoption Curve. I believe that we are somewhere in the Innovator/Early Adopter phase for this space, namely because what we are seeing in the market are that companies like Cisco and Wells Fargo actively looking to upgrade their eDiscovery technologies to the best available proactive solutions. These are the same companies that are willing to take the time investment to become educated, and lead their industries in risk management. Once the Innovators and Early Adopters begin to the raise awareness and the government continues to add pressure (see my post on HR 1387 or Steve Chan's post here), we will see enough examples to propel the proactive industry to the real meat of the bell curve. 

Inside legal counsels should be aware that this is the curve of the future. Proactive eDiscovery means being prepared for litigation like companies never had the capability of being before. And we all know that the key to success (and winning) is all in the preparation. Being a laggard is simply too risky.