DCIG Announces the Industry's First, Most Comprehensive DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Software Buyer's Guide

Today DCIG and eDiscovery Solutions Group are pleased to jointly announce the availability of a new DCIG Buyer's Guide, the DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks 25 software tools that help law firms, litigators and organizations reduce their overall cost of eDiscovery. This Buyer's Guide gives these entities the resources they need to assist them to quickly complete what is typically a very arduous and time-consuming process: selecting the right ECA software that matches their specific requirements.

The extraordinary increase in the amount of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is placing a heavy burden on the world's legal systems as they struggle to provide a cost effective approach to the first stage in any eDiscovery process: collecting and preparing relevant ESI that may be required by litigation.

A growing segment of the overall process of eDiscovery is Early Case Assessment (ECA) which helps litigators by identifying, collecting and analyzing potentially relevant ESI before a law suit even goes to trial. This makes ECA software sought after by law firms, litigation service providers and corporate buyers worldwide.  

To date there has not been a commercially available objective ranking to assist in a buying decision of these ECA tools. So over the past six months, DCIG in partnership with eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) has analyzed the top 25 ECA software tools, the results of which it is releasing in its inaugural DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Software Buyer's Guide.

The amount of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) that the world produces and stores on a daily basis is increasing at an accelerating rate. In 2012 alone:

• The number of business emails sent and received per day totaled 89 billion
• The number of worldwide Instant Messaging (IM) accounts total over 2.7 billion
• There are 2.8 ZB's of ESI with expectations that this amount will double every 2 years

This increase in data has made ECA Software an important asset to any organization routinely involved in litigation making it an imperative for these organizations to find a better way to understand what products are available on the market so they can make a more informed buying decision based upon their specific requirements. It is with this intent that DCIG and eDSG together embarked to deliver the industry's first and most comprehensive and objective ECA Software Buyer's Guide.

Based on their research, DCIG and eDSG placed a heightened focus on ECA software that delivered the following features as an integrated holistic platform:

• Data Mapping
• Analysis of enterprise ESI before collections
• Real-time collection of enterprise ESI
• Integration with enterprise archiving systems
• Ability to process social media ESI
• Legal Hold
• Workflow management
• Project management
• Next generation search
• First Pass Review
• Next generation user interface
• Information dashboard
• SaaS delivery option

Based on these general criteria, DCIG developed an online survey of over 100 questions and 300 data points that would enable them to evaluate the specific capabilities of each ECA tool. DCIG then sent this survey to the top 30 leading ECA software products providers.  

Once each vendor's survey was submitted, DCIG processed the results as provided by the ECA vendors through its automated survey system and created a score and data sheet for each ECA tool. To ensure the information provided in the Buyer's Guide was accurate and up-to-date, DCIG provided each vendor with a copy of their respective data sheets without the scores or rankings to validate what features their ECA Software solution supported.

As with all DCIG Buyer's Guides, this Guide is not intended to be a substitute for internal testing or to tell IT managers which solution to buy. Rather it is designed to help identify and aid in coming up with a list of competitive products that have features that may meet an end user's specific needs.

Based on its research, DCIG found that the following ECA software products to be in the Top 10 in the DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment Software Buyer's Guide to include (in alphabetical order):

• Autonomy Investigator and Early Case Assessment (ECA)
• Exterro Fusion eDiscovery
• Gallivan Gallivan & O'Melia LLC DigitalWarRoom
• Guidance Software EnCase eDiscovery
• NextPoint Discovery Cloud
• NUIX Nuix Enterprise Discover
• Orcatec Document Decisioning Suite
• StoredIQ DiscoveryIQ
• Symantec Clearwell
• ZyLAB eDiscovery Bundle

Of the evaluated ECA software products, the three ECA software products that DCIG ranked as "Recommended" were EnCase eDiscovery from Guidance Software, Fusion eDiscovery from Exterro and the complete eDiscovery bundle from Zylab.

Highlights of the products that achieved a "Recommended" ranking from DCIG included:

• Single holistic solution across the entire ECA life cycle
• Native Data Mapping
• Native Legal Hold Management
• Native Workflow Management
• Native Project Management
• Analysis of enterprise ESI before collections
• Real-time collection of enterprise ESI
• Integration with enterprise archiving systems
• Ability to process social media ESI
• Next generation search
• First Pass Review
• Next generation user interface
• Information dashboard
• SaaS delivery option

The interactive and static 2012 DCIG ECA Software Buyer's Guide is available for license from DCIG.  Please contact DCIG's VP of Business Development, Jim Nash, at jim.nash@dcig.com or please visit:  http://www.dcig.com/ibg for more information.