RenewData Introduces Industry Leading Price Model that Yields Increased Simplicity and Predictability of E-Discovery Project Costs

Price model enables organizations to easily forecast e-discovery costs based on the number of custodians processed

AUSTIN, TX - July 30, 2008 - RenewData, a leading provider of e-discovery and electronically stored information risk management (ESIRM™) services, today announced a new market-leading price model that will allow law firms and corporations to easily and more precisely estimate their costs at the beginning of an e-discovery project. The new price model is based on the number of custodians processed, which is a known factor early in the project versus the industry standard pricing model of gigabytes processed, which is often not known and is difficult to estimate until after the project has begun.

RenewData's de-duplication, data filtering and culling, load file conversion, and iCONECT load services are all priced using the new per-custodian price model. This model will enable more predictability for RenewData's clients, because unlike the number of gigabytes to be processed, the number of custodians is known when the project begins. Industry standard pricing has typically been based on gigabytes processed. A client may know the number of backup tapes to be processed, but since the amount of data on the media can vary widely, the resulting volume of data can be nearly impossible to correctly estimate. Conversely, when an e-discovery order is received, the number of targeted custodians is immediately known.

"With electronic discovery spending estimated to be in excess of $4B by the end of 2009, it's crucial that the industry start coming up with more sustainable ways for organizations to predict and control costs," said George Socha, e-discovery special master and expert witness of Socha Consulting LLC. "RenewData's approach to pricing indicates a change in the industry which could greatly simplify the entire electronic discovery process for corporations and law firms."

The goal of RenewData's new price model is to make it as simple as possible for organizations to predict their costs early on and to avoid surprises at the end of the project in instances where there is substantially more data on the backup media than was first estimated. In these situations, the final costs can vary dramatically from what was estimated at the beginning of the project. This model gives organizations the ability to accurately estimate project costs based on the number of custodians associated with a given case, rather than trying to internally estimate the number of gigabytes contained on the backup media in question.

"We are seeing the e-discovery market evolving rapidly and feel this change is crucial to meeting the needs of our clients," said Steven Horan, CEO of RenewData. "Organizations are increasingly frustrated with difficult pricing structures and with invoices at the end of a project that aren't consistent with the project proposals they received. They are demanding ways to make costs more predictable and consistent. Our new price model directly addresses these demands and enables organizations to more effectively plan and ultimately save costs on their e-discovery projects."

IDC Flash: ActiveVault 4.0 Offers Retention Management, Legal Hold, and Early Case Assessment for Historical Data

IN THIS EVENT FLASH:

This IDC Flash discusses RenewData’s recently announced ActiveVault 4.0 release.

By: Vivian Tero

Click here for more...

 

IDC Flash: RenewData and Symantec Partner to Consolidate Legacy Data in Enterprise Vault as a Proactive Approach to Litigation

IN THIS EVENT FLASH:
This IDC Flash discusses the recently announced service from RenewData and Symantec.

By: Vivian Tero

Click here for more...

E-Discovery and a Life Lesson

By Bob Little on July 22, 2008
Chief Marketing Officer
RenewData

After a recent weekend away, I returned home to find that one of my neighbors had backed into my brand new car. Fortunately, he is a stand-up guy and left a note with genuine contact information. (Thanks, Lee!) And what, you may ask, does this have to do with e-Discovery? Any company faced with litigation is going to go through some of the same mental steps that I did over the past few days.

I am newly resident in Texas and don’t really know the laws associated with accident liabilities here. There is a sense of dread at having to learn this new process and fear of making a mistake costing me money in the long run. How much trouble is this going to be for me? Who do I need to contact? What actions should I take to protect myself? Can I trust the insurance companies? How do I select a repair shop that will do quality work?

Shift this scenario to the corporate counsel facing litigation. Some of those same questions are likely to surface. How disruptive is this matter likely to be to myself and my company? Just what are the relevant discovery laws and how will they impact my actions? Who do I need to contact internally and externally? What actions should I take to protect myself and my organization? Can I trust the legal and technical advice I will receive? How do I select service partners that will do quality work? There is that same sense of dread and fear except the magnitude of the situation is greater and the potential negative impact from a mistake can have far larger consequences.

Advance planning and preparation are the best ways to mitigate this situation. Just as having an insurance policy and understanding the claim process can help resolve much of the unknown around accident liability, developing and implementing a litigation preparedness plan can give a corporation a big advantage when the need to respond to a legal or regulatory matter arises. You should familiarize yourself with the FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) and its state corollaries. Your plan should cover what information to keep and for how long. It should be a comprehensive plan that covers both paper based records and electronically stored information (ESI). It should mandate a legal hold process to suspend deletion of data when preservation is required in response to potential litigation. And it should clearly define steps to establish a defensible chain of custody for that data.

Selecting an insurance company or auto repair shop solely on price without considering the type of expertise or their reputation for delivering timely service of high quality will only add to the unease and difficulty inherent in an already stressful situation. Similarly, your company should spend time examining potential e-Discovery vendors in advance of the need to use their services. Evaluate the vendor’s history and any recommendations you may receive from other businesses. You want to find out everything you can about the vendor, with an eye toward what they know, both in legal and technological terms. They should have a reputation for quality service and for fair and predictable pricing. And they should be a true partner for you, able to make sure the technology on all sides interfaces properly and able to support you as necessary in court.

None of these steps will eliminate all the worry and stress from either situation. But they will help make them manageable and less disruptive. For more guidance on how to be better prepared for litigation and how to protect your data for legal action, look for information from the Sedona Conference or The Electronic Discovery Reference Model, two organizations that RenewData actively supports.

Sedona Conference 

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model

And of course you can visit www.RenewData.com to find more information on e-Discovery, litigation readiness, or ESI Risk Management.

Follow the data

Legal Technology
Law.com's Legal Technology Blog

It used to be "follow the money." But with electronic data discovery in litigation, "follow the data" is more appropriate. Vendors like Renewdata are doing just that, for current and historical data with ActiveVault and Symantec's Enterprise Vault.

Renewdata's ActiveVault 4.0 was released last month. With the new version, companies can send their historical data to Renewdata's hosting service. They will aggregate the data into an active vault and make it available for clients to manipulate it with litigation holds and retention policies. In the event litigation ensues, self-service, early-case assessment tools are also available for customers to do some forecasting. When customers want the data back, Renewdata can return it on demand and per customer requirements in a variety of formats for CT Summation, LexisNexis Concordance, and Microsoft Exchange.

The self-service tools available for ActiveVault 4.0 are delivered through a Web browser interface. On the good side, there is nothing to install on the local machine to access and manipulate the archive on ActiveVault -- that also reduces training requirements. On the bad side, there are no APIs for ActiveVault to interoperate with existing applications like policy management and data retention tools. That is on the road map.

I will look forward to the APIs for interoperability. Until then, Renewdata is forging partnerships such as the the recent agreement with Symantec.

Renewdata and Symantec announced a service to migrate and consolidate historical e-mail into a Symantec Enterprise Vault. This "Data Migration Service for Symantec Enterprise Vault" migrates and consolidates historical e-mail and creates a centralized repository for legal discovery matter.

The service aims to convert, load, and index historical data from backup tapes and direct the output to an Enterprise Vault. Data can be extracted from removable media. Then e-mail and file data are de-duplicated; static operating system and application files are also eliminated. The fully processed data is is than stored in an Enterprise Vault archive which is then returned to the customer’s Enterprise Vault system as a turn-key offering for litigation support.

When you follow the data, e-discovery providers like Renewdata are not only servicing ongoing litigation needs, but also providing proacitve litigation tools that allow companies to engage in risk managment practices with historic data, using a hosting model with self-service tools.

RenewData Migration Service Enables Direct Management of Historical Data from within Symantec Enterprise Vault

Service Converts Data from Backup Tapes into a Fully Loaded and Indexed Enterprise Vault for Immediate Use

AUSTIN, TX - July 15, 2008
- RenewData, a leading provider of e-discovery and electronically stored information risk management (ESIRM™) services, today announced a new service for email archiving with Symantec Enterprise Vault. The service migrates and consolidates historical email into Enterprise Vault to create a centralized repository for legal discovery. The addition of this service supports RenewData's strategy to provide services that address the need of corporations to establish a more proactive approach to litigation readiness.

The Data Migration Service for Symantec Enterprise Vault is a bundled offering that is an enhancement to RenewData's standard Data Migration service. The service provides for the conversion, loading, and indexing of historical data from backup tape directly into Enterprise Vault. Data is extracted from removable media, then e-mail and file data are de-duplicated and static operating system and application files are eliminated. The fully processed data is ingested, indexed, and stored in an Enterprise Vault archive which is then installed on the client's Enterprise Vault system as a complete turn-key offering.

"Symantec Enterprise Vault is a powerful archiving tool and has enabled us to better manage and gain control of large volumes of ESI in our organization," said a litigation support manager of a leading Fortune 500 energy corporation. "With the implementation of RenewData's Data Migration for Enterprise Vault services, our organization is now able to also include much needed but difficult to access historical ESI into the EV archive for comprehensive litigation searches."

The previously unmanaged data is often times an organization's most at-risk data when faced with litigation or investigations. Once data is migrated into the archive, organizations may then apply legal holds and retention policies on the historical data and eliminate the records that are not under legal hold or that have exceeded retention requirements. All migrations are performed under full chain-of-custody with a repeatable, defensible process that ensures data integrity.

"Rapidly increasing volumes of information and a growing need to address regulations and compliance requirements have been the primary catalysts for corporations implementing Enterprise Vault in their organization," said Dave Campbell, senior product marketing manager, Symantec. "This solution provides an efficient way to add historical data to their active archives as well and addresses the huge liability risk corporations face when dealing with large collections of backup tapes which were originally intended for disaster recovery purposes."

The service allows organizations to now manage both historical and archived email directly from Enterprise Vault, enabling a faster response to accelerated e-discovery timeframes, as well as reducing the scope and exposure of litigation holds. It provides a simple and defensible method of migrating historical data from backup tapes and older email archive systems, while potentially eliminating the bulk of the clients' backup tape inventories.

RenewData Unveils Industry's First Archiving Solution to Enable Consolidation, Storage, and Management of All Historical ESI

Greater Visibility, Control, and Access of Data Enables Unprecedented Risk Mitigation, Compliance, and Litigation Readiness

AUSTIN, TX - June 25, 2008
- RenewData, the leading provider of e-discovery and electronically stored information risk management (ESIRM™) services, today announced the industry's first evidence archiving solution which enables clients to have better insight into their most at-risk data. Corporations that have inherited inventories of backup tapes through M&A or have disparate legacy archives, as well as those that face frequent litigation are learning that the most at-risk data they have is historical data on unmanaged backup or other storage media. In order to address legal and compliance requirements, these corporations need greater visibility and control of this data, and ActiveVault 4.0 gives them this level of service. This service further extends RenewData's strategy of providing clients with proactive risk management solutions through its other services for Data Migrations and Backup Tape Liability Management.

RenewData's ActiveVault version 4.0 is a highly secure managed service that allows clients to proactively consolidate, archive, and manage all inactive data from virtually any media source into an easily accessible format where they can apply and enforce retention policies and legal holds to ensure data is properly retained and managed. Through a web browser interface, clients will also have access to self-service Early Case Assessment (ECA) tools, as well as self searching, culling and reviews tools allowing them to quickly and cost-effectively determine a legal strategy prior to the more expensive review and production steps of the discovery process. Because the data is hosted by RenewData, a neutral third party provider, it is protected against inadvertent or intentional spoliation, and there is no need for large, up-front capital expenditures.

"The volume of data being stored by today's organizations continues to grow, primarily driven by requirements for compliance, legal discovery and data retention," said Brian Babineau, Senior Analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "According to our research, a majority of corporate counsels say that data requested as part of an electronic discovery inquiry is 36 months or older. Yet, many organizations do not know what is on its backup media and this can present a huge liability risk when faced with lawsuits, investigations, or audits. In fact, by proactively archiving and culling the tapes on hand, organizations will be better equipped to handle discovery and compliance requests."

By implementing a proactive archiving approach, clients can apply and enforce retention policies and legal holds to ensure data is properly managed, preserved, and accessible. RenewData technology enables extraction of data from the electronic media or computer environment without re-creating the native environment in which the data was stored, and then works with clients to process and ensure data is fully indexed, de-duplicated and stored – all within precise chain-of-custody tracking. The data is stored in a highly secure data facility that has state-of-the-art protection and security measures.

"We are committed to solving a real problem corporations face every day. Companies are still dealing with how to effectively deal with the preservation and archiving of both current and historical evidence to meet regulatory and litigation requirements and deal with dormant liability issues," said Steven Horan, CEO of RenewData. "With ActiveVault 4.0, we are leveraging our core e-discovery and archiving strengths to perfect hosting data for some of the largest and most demanding requests that our clients are facing. We believe this service is at the intersection of market requirements for both e-discovery and archiving. It is designed to ensure that both legal and IT professionals are able to proactively meet discovery and investigation deadlines, while maintaining high levels of quality and controlling the expense of electronic evidence management."

ActiveVault 4.0 is delivered as a managed service and priced as a true Software-as-a-Service model. This allows customers to pay only for the data capture and preservation services they require. For more information on ActiveVault 4.0, please visit the Evidence Archiving section on the RenewData website.

RenewData Promotes Executives to Strengthen Strategic Focus on Providing Proactive E-Discovery Services

E-Discovery and Compliance Industry Veterans to Lead Strategic Marketing and Technical Focus as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Enterprise Architect

AUSTIN, TX - June 23, 2008
- RenewData, the leading provider of e-discovery and electronically stored information risk management (ESIRM™) services, today announced the promotion of Robert Little to chief marketing officer and Matthew Davis to chief enterprise architect. These highly accomplished executives and industry veterans bring extensive experience and skill in the e-discovery and compliance industries to further develop and extend the corporation's strategic plans.

"Bob's and Matt's impressive credentials speak for themselves and I'm proud to have such accomplished professionals on our team," said Steven Horan, chief executive officer of RenewData. "They both add extensive depth and experience from the e-discovery and compliance industries to the team. Their expertise in these industries is critical to the execution of our strategic focus on providing proactive ESI risk management and discovery services and I look forward to collaborating with them further on new ideas and initiatives."

As chief marketing officer, Little is responsible for defining RenewData's strategic market vision and new marketing initiatives to drive the growth of our next generation of services. He joined RenewData as the vice president of marketing in 2007 and possesses more than 20 years of experience integrating software product capabilities with client needs and industry trends. Little has been recognized throughout his career for applying technology to meet compliance requirements in life sciences, healthcare, financial services, corporate governance, and litigation. He was previously at ZANTAZ, where he led the marketing organization and was a corporate spokesperson on the application of technology to meet compliance requirements. Prior to ZANTAZ, Little was at EMC and Documentum (prior to its acquisition by EMC), where he was the general manager of the Compliance Product Business Unit.

In his role as the chief enterprise architect, Davis is responsible for developing and delivering new technical solutions to improve and expand service capabilities for RenewData's solutions. Davis possesses more than 13 years of software engineering and software consulting experience designing and implementing highly scalable software applications and solutions, including more than eight years of e-discovery focused development. Davis joined RenewData in 2004 and has held various senior management and executive roles, such as vice president of technology where he provided vision, support, and implementation of all technology solutions and senior director of engineering, where he was responsible for integrating operations and engineering to ensure the success of development projects. Prior to joining RenewData, Davis worked for companies in the e-discovery and compliance industry such as iWitness, Inc. and ZANTAZ.

RenewData Builds Management Team with Appointment of Executive Vice President of Legal Services

Leading E-Discovery and ESI Risk Management Services Provider Strengthens Strategic Focus with Appointment of Seasoned Legal and Consulting Executive

AUSTIN, TX - June 20, 2008 - RenewData, a leading provider of e-discovery and electronically stored information risk management (ESIRM™) services, today announced it has named Richard Cohen to Executive Vice President of Legal Services. This appointment further strengthens RenewData’s strategic activities to provide its clients with the resources necessary to establish a more proactive approach to litigation readiness. With over 20 years of management and legal experience as a corporate executive, consultant and general counsel, Cohen will expand the depth of legal and management expertise of the executive team.

As Executive Vice President, Cohen will lead RenewData’s external activities and functions and will work with his team of experts at RenewData to ensure the proper approach to tailor e-discovery strategies for each client.

"We are thrilled to have Richard join the management team at RenewData," said Steven Horan, CEO of RenewData. "His team prepares our clients with the tools and services necessary to address legal or regulatory requirements and to be prepared for future proceedings. The addition of Richard to our team offers a breadth of knowledge that is invaluable as we continue to provide the highest level of service in the market and continue our efforts to address our client’s requirements for litigation readiness."

Cohen comes to RenewData from a large legal services organization where he served as the Senior Vice President & Managing Director of Legal Services focusing on complex litigation matters and bankruptcies. Additionally, Cohen was COO of Integrex Professional Claims Services where he was responsible for operations, IT, sales, and marketing. His extensive experience also includes General Counsel at Ohio Power and Columbus Southern Power Companies, as well as executive positions at Lexis-Nexis, Lexford Residential Trust, City of Cuyahoga Falls, and City of Akron.

Beyond his work in legal services, Cohen has been actively involved with industry organizations including the American Corporate Counsel Association where he served as President of the Central Ohio Chapter and has chaired the American Bar Association’s Coordinating Group on Energy Law and Ohio Electric Utility Legal Committee, co-chaired the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Mass Torts Subcommittee, and has been a member of the ABA Class Actions/Derivative Suits Subcommittee. Additionally, Cohen is a member of the Corporate Counsel Advisory Board for The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel and a recipient of the Distinguished Legal Service Award conferred by Corporate Legal Times. Cohen is also a member of the American and Ohio State Bar Association.