Archive for the ‘E-Discovery/Compliance’ Category

01: What the SAP Agreement Means for ISYS

Well, quite a bit has been written in recent weeks about the global OEM agreement that ISYS secured with software giant SAP. Much of the comment has understandably been technical in nature, as well as what it means for the SAP products that are embedding ISYS Document Filters and Big Data as a driving force in Text Analytics.

But what I’d like to touch on here is just what the agreement means for ISYS as a company, in validating our medium term strategy of becoming the pre-eminent player in “Embedded Search”. In effect, decoupling our solutions (like Document Filters and Integration Kit) and using these as the dedicated search components powering a range of broader, search-enabled solutions.

In pursuing  this strategy, we now not only have major vendors like SAP, Sybase and MarkLogic; but through them and other larger Partners (such as HP, EMC, Proofpoint and Detica) also provide embedded ISYS solutions to many top Fortune 500 companies in business-critical application areas like Text Analytics, Enterprise Content Management, Email Archiving, eDiscovery and Data Loss Prevention.

Today, this means there is a high likelihood that your business is utilizing some form of search-enabled application powered by ISYS – along with 16,000 other organizations that use ISYS technology to help grow their business.

It also means that we have grown quite a bit as a company, based on delivering superior technology, backed up by great service and support. Indeed, those were essentially the reasons why SAP chose ISYS to help power its new generation of enterprise software solutions. We worked closely with SAP over 18 months and were able to leverage our existing relationship with Sybase, itself an SAP Company.

ISYS has very definitely arrived. Small wonder that many ISVs are now looking to us and our class-leading Document Filters technology to help them and their own customers extract greater business value in the world of Big Data.

02: NEW: ISYS Document Filters 2010

The momentum we’ve built up over the last several weeks culminates tomorrow in the release of ISYS Document Filters 2010 – the newest version of our embedded solution for text extraction, printing and high-definition viewing.  This latest release of ISYS Document Filters is especially noteworthy, as it adds the critical fidelity components of printing and high-definition viewing.  These capabilities have become high-demand capabilities from enterprises, OEMs and ISVs who are either looking to fill a gap or replace existing technology from Oracle or Autonomy. 

The addition of printing and high-definition viewing was developed completely by the ISYS R&D team; these new capabilities are the most significant pieces of IP we’ve developed since the original release of ISYS Document Filters in March 2009 (formerly known as ISYS File Readers).  As you will recall, we’ve gained several new OEM customers in recent weeks, including Sybase and Janya, while continuing to expand our traditional embedded search deals, which recently includes Bridgeline Digital.

We’re taking the show on the road to Interop New York, where we’ll be in town on Wednesday to get the word out.  Look for the ISYS Street Team handing out branded canvas bags to the masses attending the event.

03: Early Warning Systems

As a mother of three, I read about the case of Angela Gordon recently and wondered how we could miss key warning signs in our social services work.  In my field, I see the obstacles companies face every day when it comes to leveraging their content, so I can understand, in part, the challenges of social services work.  But when information is this critical, I have to question why we appear to be banging our heads against the wall with half-solutions.

Since Sarah Payne’s abduction and murder (yet another high-profile failure), UK police forces have been trying to find ways to enable better access to all information that may be relevant, whether checking on someone applying for a job or investigating a crime.

The collection of various reported stories of neglect and abuse in children’s own homes has UK councils struggling to determine why social workers don’t have the information they need to pinpoint situations requiring intervention. 

To address the problem, some are building data warehouses with BI capability on the front end.  But this is a huge undertaking, expensive, lengthy and very difficult to get right.  What’s more, it doesn’t provide a short-term solution. 

Given our experience in working with police forces, we’ve seen search technology deliver immediate improvements in intelligence work, often serving as an early warning system for investigators.  In the very least, we should be looking as these capabilities in the interim to help stem the tide of costly missed warning signs.

04: Visit Us at LegalTech New York

I’ve been to New York City more than a dozen times in the last seven years, and it never gets old, even in February.  ISYS, as a company, has been traveling to NYC for the LegalTech event since 1994, which means it has been 16 years since we first started connecting more deeply with law firms and other software vendors looking to round out their technology with embedded search.  If you’ll be in town for the event, please stop by Booth #329 and say hello to the team.

What makes LegalTech pretty unique is the commaraderie of the event.  Maybe it’s because our focus is on connecting with our fellow exhibitors, but we always leave the event smarter than when we arrived.  We’ve never approached it as a hard sales exercise; we’re there to learn as much as the next guy and gal, so from that standpoint it’s refreshing.  For those of you who have direct legal responsibilities, or for those who are on the periphery dealing with corporate compliance and risk issues, I’d love to hear what you’re looking to get out of LegalTech this time around.  From our point of view, we’re still quite focused on embedded search for traditional ISVs/OEMs as well as SaaS providers, but we’re also increasingly engaging in conversations regarding early case assessment with commercial organizations.

For an event of this size to still be highly relevant, it’s clear these issues remain quite acute.  As always, I’m looking forward to it, so we hope to see you next week.  As a reminder, the event is at the Hilton New York, from Feb. 1-3.  I believe the folks at American Lawyer Media are offering a complimentary exhibit hall pass if you want to drop in for an afternoon.

05: 2010 – the year of Federated Enterprise Search?

How the landscape has changed…ten years ago we had many different file types, but not many places to store them. Today, we have fewer file types, but many more repositories – add the complexity of the different security models into the mix and clearly the focus of enterprise search is changing. It is good to see the issue of federated search finally being raised, witness recent articles in the likes of Information Week.

The question that enterprises need to ask is who is best placed to provide true federated search? My opinion is that it is not the owner of any one of the repositories —  it is those companies that have an independent view of data. We will be hearing more about this issue in 2010 as our customers demand better access to information, and don’t care what email system of document repository their data resides in.

06: ISYS Powers EMC’s SourceOne archive indexing

Our partner EMC recently announced its new data archiving platform, SourceOne. EMC says the new architecture is designed to meet today’s pressing e-discovery and compliance needs. ISYS is pleased to play a key role in this new solution, providing an OEM search solution that serves as the backbone indexing and query engine for archived data. You can read some recent coverage of EMC SourceOne, as well as learn more about the OEM search solution that powers SourceOne’s archive indexing.

07: “ISYS Anywhere” Demo at LegalTech 2009

If you’re based in New York City or will be attending the New York LegalTech show, we invite you to stop by our booth (#326) for a demonstration of our “ISYS Anywhere” technology.  ISYS is actively developing mobile enterprise access solutions that take advantage of the latest mobile devices, and we’d like to show you the initial implementation of this initiative.

Even better, when you stop by to see ISYS in action on the iPhone, we’ll enter you in our drawing to win an iPod Touch.  The demo on hand will be an instance of ISYS:web searching the email corpus from the Enron case.  You’ll be surprised by the level of insight ISYS offers right out of the box, so stop by and check it out.

08: ISYS Among Top E-Discovery Software Vendors

The results of the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey were released on Tuesday, and ISYS Search Software once again ranks among the top e-discovery software vendors in multiple categories.  We’re pleased to have placed in the Top 10 in the Preservation, Collection and Analysis categories for 2007 Electronic Discovery Software Providers.

The full rankings will appear in the August issue of Law Technology News .  They also will be posted on LTN’s EDD Update just after midnight on July 22 and, following that, on the Socha Consulting website.

ISYS recently released Version 9 of its industry-leading desktop search software, ISYS:desktop.  With ISYS:desktop 9, we added several enhancements to better address e-discovery requirements.  We invite you to learn more about ISYS:desktop 9 and download a trial version.  You can also read our paper on Enterprise Search for E-Discovery Compliance.

09: Solcara and ISYS Partner on SolSearch

Those who follow ISYS in the UK know that Solcara has been a longtime, valued partner of ours.  Solcara designs federated search technology designed to help organizations better control, manage and locate their digital information.  Recently, Solcara announced its new SolSearch solution, which pairs our indexing technology with Solcara’s federated search capabilities.

Solcara has had considerable success serving the information access and management needs of the legal industry, among other markets.  It helps professionals connect to their know how systems, as well as search and locate vital information that resides across a variety of sources, both internally and externally.  We’re pleased to play a role in these solutions and look forward to continued work with Solcara.

Take a moment to learn more about SolSearch and see what it can do for your organization.  You can also access third-party reporting and analysis from IT Week and over at the Beyond Search blog.

10: Enterprise Search for E-Discovery

We recently completed the survey for the upcoming 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery report.  It’s the third year we’ve responded, and if ISYS is any barometer for trends, then you’re left to conclude there’s actually something to this e-discovery thing.  Projections are up, the customer base is broader, and our technology (by design) is more directly engineered to answer many of the e-discovery challenges, including advanced search and text analytics. Pure e-discovery vendors would probably agree that the years ahead look good, but we’ll wait and see what Socha-Gelbmann say.

In Part One of our series on enterprise search white papers, we’d like to call your attention to our paper titled “Enterprise Search for E-Discovery Compliance.”  Over at DevCentral in Sydney, we’re busy doubling our capabilities in this space, but the paper itself serves as a good introductory overview on the key e-discovery requirements for search.  As always, we invite your comments.