Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software

Market Definition/Description

The market covered by this Magic Quadrant contains vendors of electronic discovery (e-discovery) software for the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis and production of electronically stored information (ESI) in support of the common law discovery process in litigation or other investigative proceedings, regardless of delivery method.

The technology capabilities covered by the e-discovery software include information management, legal hold (data identification and preservation), collection, processing, review and production. These capabilities are listed in the sequential order in which a typical e-discovery process follows. Refer to the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) — an established and accepted framework by the e-discovery practitioners. The capabilities rated in this report match and support the various stages of a typical e-discovery process.

The "left-hand side" of the EDRM refers to information governance, identification, preservation and collection, and the "right-hand side" of the EDRM includes processing, review, analysis, production and presentation.

The e-discovery software market is served by three clusters of providers: software providers, law firms and service providers (legal process outsourcers [LPOs] and managed service providers [MSPs]). Although mature, this market has a large number of participants. Because vendors focus on different stages of the EDRM and have developed core competencies over time, it can be difficult to draw consistent and direct comparisons when examining the various vendors in this market. In reality, although the majority of the vendors have technology capabilities that support all or multiple stages of the EDRM, buyers may only use a vendor's best capabilities and supplement with other products to complete their e-discovery technology toolbox.

Magic Quadrant

Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software

Source: Gartner (May 2015)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

AccessData

Effective 1 January 2015, AccessData Group split into two business entities: AccessData and Resolution1 Security. Here we evaluate AccessData as a single vendor, as the split occurred outside the time scope of this report. AccessData offers three sets of software solutions: e-discovery, digital forensics and cybersecurity. Under e-discovery, it has three products to cover different stages of e-discovery: Forensic Toolkit (FTK), AD eDiscovery and Summation. FTK serves as the main data collection engine, and it is also the enabling and underpinning technology for the AD eDiscovery platform. AD eDiscovery is a processing and review platform with early case assessment (ECA; see Note 1) and legal hold capabilities built in. Summation is a stand-alone review product. It can be purchased as an appliance or as a Web-based review platform.

Strengths

• AccessData specializes in data collection — especially for dealing with a large variety of data sources (that is, archive, database, enterprise content management systems, email, multimedia, Office 365, presentation, image and spreadsheet) and devices (that is, different hardware form factors and multiple operating systems).
• The single client agent of its FTK technology can be used for both forensic data collection and cybersecurity monitoring. This synergy between its e-discovery and cybersecurity offerings is timely for the e-discovery software market due to the increasing concerns of potential data breaches and the related e-discovery needs.
• AccessData offers an easy and cost-effective path for customers to convert from other platforms (such as from Guidance Software) to its system.

Cautions

• The recent changes in the organization structure would have a short-term negative impact on its stability and its execution and performance across all its product lines.
• The review capability through AD eDiscovery came from AccessData's past acquisition of the Summation technology and is not as competitive a tool as FTK.
• Consistent and persistent customization, as well as training documentation, are two areas for improvement.

Catalyst

Catalyst offers e-discovery technology, with a focus on technology-assisted document review (see Note 2) and hosting. Catalyst Insight allows for automated loading of data, and it covers processing through search, analytics, review and production. Insight Predict, a technology-assisted review (TAR) offering intended to improve earlier-generation predictive coding, works without collecting all documents first and reduces the need for specialty expertise in machine learning. The Catalyst products use an XML and custom NoSQL engine designed to manage large datasets and make them searchable. Insight Predict, the analytics functionality of Insight, runs on a custom-built graph database. The company is now five years into a concerted strategy to support the Asia/Pacific region, opening more data centers in that region and continuing to invest in its multilanguage support abilities.

Strengths

• Catalyst is invested heavily in TAR, making it easier to adopt, and this TAR engine is capable of being deployed for a wider variety of cases and tasks. It is a pacesetter in this area of the market.
• The company's offerings have demonstrated the ability to support high-volume multimatter environments, with an emphasis on fast search results.
• Catalyst's pricing and technology model lends itself well to enterprises that will utilize its products for multimatter management, reducing document processing costs and processes.

Cautions

• Catalyst is designed and intended for large, high-volume, multimatter environments, and it is not suitable for smaller matters.
• Catalyst's direct support for the left-hand side of the EDRM is a new offering to the marketplace and is not yet proven.
• Catalyst's data storage fees are expensive and are at the higher end of the market.

CommVault

CommVault offers Simpana, a unified data management offering that provides backup, archiving and compliance-related e-discovery capabilities. It is sold primarily to corporate IT departments. Simpana uses its ContentStore, a hardware-agnostic virtual repository, to store all backup and archive data. Furthermore, in this repository, policies for records management, archiving and e-discovery, including tagging, can be applied. In addition to email systems, CommVault can collect data from file shares, mobile devices, desktops/laptops, Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum. Simpana is priced on a named user basis and deployed as on-premises software, with cloud options available through MSPs. CommVault is suited for organizations with a low volume of e-discovery matters.

Strengths

• CommVault is well-suited for e-discovery of content from mobile and remote workers.
• For enterprises at the early stage of e-discovery adoption, CommVault's solution represents an improvement over manual e-discovery processes and manually combing through legacy tape environments.
• Archiving is a key foundational element in proactive e-discovery management, and CommVault is highly rated in this area.

Cautions

• Simpana has a limited set of left-hand-side capabilities for identification, preservation and collection. The company partners with Exterro and Kroll for review.
• E-discovery is a secondary use case for CommVault. Many of CommVault's e-discovery users have bought Simpana primarily for backup.
• Consulting services and domain expertise about e-discovery as a process or experience in high-stakes litigation are not areas of focus for the company.

Driven

Driven offers e-discovery technology, as well as forensic and consulting services. Driven One is an integrated e-discovery platform that has two products: One Processing and One Review. ECA and predictive coding (also referred to as TAR; see Note 2) features are built into the One platform. Driven One can be purchased with an annual software license as well as a SaaS model. For the hosted model, the One platform is deployed via a virtual desktop infrastructure, and customers access the platform via a Citrix or Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection. In addition to the One technology, Driven also provides services to support forensic data collection and consulting for litigation support.

Strengths

• Driven One takes customers' needs into their software design and development process and is willing to cater to one-off type of customers' requests for customization.
• Driven has an agile customer support model, and its customers rate its responsiveness as a top benefit.
• The One platform shares the same source code for both processing and review.

Cautions

• Driven's One platform for review lacks differentiation from its competitors.
• The recent HTML5 code release is Driven's first browser-based version. It is currently tested and used by a limited number of users.
• The One platform does not have technology capabilities to support the left-hand side of the EDRM, and Driven has no formal partnerships with the left-hand-side-focused e-discovery vendors either.

Epiq Systems

Epiq Systems offers software, hosting and consulting services. Its software includes eDataMatrix, Epiq Analytics, DocuMatrix, Epiq Portal and Epiq Chat Analyzer. eDataMatrix and Epiq Analytics are for processing, analysis and ECA. DocuMatrix is a review platform. The Chat Analyzer handles chat content from instant messaging and chat rooms, such as Instant Bloomberg. Epiq Portal serves as a workflow, project management, reporting and monitoring tool. In addition to its own proprietary technology, Epiq hosts third-party software for collection, legal hold, processing, ECA and review. The service offering includes forensic collection, project management, consulting and data analysis. The recent acquisition of Iris Data Services further expands Epiq's service offering. Epiq can deliver its technology tools and services through hosted, on-site and managed service models. Epiq has a global presence of operations and data centers.

Strengths

• Epiq's offering in both technology and services is broad and allows flexibility to serve its customers.
• Epiq's global operations, data centers and in-field resources enable the company to serve complex and cross-border e-discovery cases.
• Customers that wish to get an end-to-end e-discovery solution from a single vendor can pick and choose from Epiq's technology toolset and service offerings.

Cautions

• Due to its solution play (technology from both its own and third parties plus services), Epiq's own proprietary software is not designed for being an end-to-end e-discovery solution but, rather, is created to serve as components focusing on specific areas of the EDRM.
• Epiq's customers rate its service higher than its technology offering. In particular, search capabilities and the intuitiveness of the user interface are areas for improvement.
• For buyers that are more interested in software than services, Epiq's services-wrapped-around-software approach is not a good fit.

Exterro

Exterro provides products to support e-discovery from identification through review. The products include Exterro Legal Hold, Exterro E-Discovery Data Management, Exterro E-Discovery Project Management and Exterro Managed Review. Its primary offering is the Exterro Fusion E-Discovery software suite, which is built on a single open platform. Exterro's point of entry for buyers is typically Exterro Legal Hold, which can manage files in place or in a repository. Exterro's Fusion Integration Hub allows integration of existing legal, e-discovery and other information management systems. Exterro's products are available via either perpetual licenses based on modules, integration adapters and connectors, or SaaS (see Note 3).

Strengths

• Exterro has a large number of connectors to data sources, including a wide array of content management systems, business applications and email systems.
• Exterro's emphasis on project management is an attractive feature set, as enterprises look to enhance their e-discovery processes in-house.
• Exterro Legal Hold is one of the industry's best-in-class legal-hold offerings, with a good ability to perform holds in place.

Cautions

• Exterro must do more validation with customers before releasing new features; in some cases, these features have arrived with little communication and have been disruptive to end users in terms of the way they had previously used the product.
• Buyers should know that although Exterro has capabilities to support the right-hand side of the EDRM, its review capability has not been adopted by as many enterprise clients as its collection, ECA and legal-hold applications.
• Exterro's collection is designed to be only a targeted collection tool and is not suitable for full-scale forensic collection.

FTI Technology

FTI Technology, a separately reported business unit of FTI Consulting, offers both e-discovery software and services. Its main product, the Ringtail platform, performs functions from processing to production — including ECA, predictive coding, review and analysis. Ringtail is available via three deployment models: on-premises, hosted and SaaS. Its ECA capabilities enable users to visually cull, manipulate and review data. Pricing options are based on named users and/or data volumes. FTI Technology also offers a broad range of e-discovery and consulting services that include forensic collection, processing, on-site analysis and review. In early 2015, FTI Technology announced a new service offering — Information Governance and Compliance. FTI Technology also entered a partnership with IBM for reselling its Ringtail technology.

Strengths

• FTI Technology is backed by FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm. FTI Consulting has a global presence of in-field experts and professionals across verticals that is the core value of its consulting business and is leveraged by the FTI Technology business segment.
• FTI Technology has a large dedicated software development team that continues to improve and innovate the Ringtail platform — especially its analytics capabilities.
• The Ringtail platform offers a sophisticated set of data visualization features for ECA and workflow management.

Cautions

• FTI Technology does not offer technology solutions for data preservation and collection.
• For complex e-discovery projects, organizations will need to engage FTI Technology's professional services to take advantage of the advanced features and power of Ringtail.
• For companies with low litigation volume and relatively simple e-discovery projects (for example, straightforward projects with few data sources and low data volume), the Ringtail platform may not be appropriate.

Guidance Software

Guidance Software offers e-discovery software that supports all stages of the EDRM, with a focus on forensic data collection and analysis. The EnCase software suite includes Enterprise (small-scale cases), eDiscovery (small- to large-scale cases), Cybersecurity (information management) and Analytics (data analysis). EnCase eDiscovery (on-premises) includes an auditable repository-based engine to identify, collect, preserve and process data. EnCase eDiscovery Review is a SaaS-based review and analysis platform. Its forensic collection supports a variety of endpoint devices and data sources. EnCase is an open platform. Through the EnCase App Central, third-party developers can build applications that extend its capabilities. Guidance Software has been investing in Linked Review, an innovative review engine.

Strengths

• Guidance Software offers a full range of e-discovery coverage, including robust forensics capabilities and automated integration between the left-hand side and right-hand side of the EDRM.
• EnCase's identification capability is a best-in-class tool, which the company continues to invest in and innovate.
• Guidance Software has been investing in innovations on its review technology (that is, the Linked Review concept).

Cautions

• Guidance Software recently made several changes to top management, including the CEO. It will take some time to see the impact of this new executive team.
• Guidance Software's right-hand-side capabilities lack recognition and mind share in the legal community.
• Some of Guidance Software's largest customers expressed that horizontal scalability was resource-intensive for cases that involve collecting high-volume data from devices that are geographically dispersed.

HP

HP's eDiscovery supports the full process of EDRM. HP Legal Hold is a separate module that can hold content in place through a number of adapters to third-party data sources or in a managed repository. HP eDiscovery can be deployed as an appliance or on-premises, as well as with full-service and self-service cloud-based models. The self-service model, eDiscovery OnDemand, is part of an ongoing product initiative that addresses the market shift toward an enterprise's desire to bring e-discovery in-house and is also targeted at the small or midsize business (SMB) segment. HP has a large base of corporate clients, and it sells predominantly to enterprises and a wide range of stakeholders — from IT to in-house general counsel. HP's predictive coding tools are fully inclusive, and there is no separate module or associated charge.

Strengths

• HP has strong processing abilities, which allows organizations to bring e-discovery in-house and to avoid historically expensive outsourced options. The company also has well-regarded, if little-known, review capabilities. The portfolio is well-balanced across the EDRM.
• HP offers a flexible variety of deployment models, including cloud/self-service that is beneficial to clients that have varying workloads around litigation and e-discovery.
• HP's eDiscovery solution leverages the joint R&D that HP invests in for different product lines. For example, HP can support mobile/remote worker data collection through its integration with its backup offerings.

Cautions

• HP eDiscovery is resource-intensive as an on-premises solution.
• HP must do more to keep pace with the application of predictive coding. Although HP was an early innovator in TAR, the market has matured, and other offerings are easier to use.
• Complexity in terms of both technology and pricing is still a challenge for HP in its eDiscovery offering.

IBM

IBM supports e-discovery as part of its Information Lifecycle Governance (ILG) portfolio of offerings. The ILG portfolio is divided into defensible disposal, e-discovery, archiving, records and retention management, and data cleanup. IBM's e-discovery solution covers legal-hold management and enforcement, collection coordination, and ECA. IBM Atlas eDiscovery Process Management has the main legal-hold capabilities and provides APIs that support a wide variety of connections to other systems. IBM Content Collector, eDiscovery Manager (mainly for processing) and eDiscovery Analyzer are also part of this solution set. Analytical capabilities include cost forecasting, along with dynamic reforecasting as data is collected and production decisions are made. StoredIQ is used for collection. Watson machine-learning technology is also leveraged by the ILG portfolio.

Strengths

• IBM's strategy and vision of connecting compliance, e-discovery, governance and risk into a comprehensive information governance program match many of the top concerns that organizations are struggling with.
• IBM Atlas eDiscovery Process Management is one of the best-in-class legal-hold tools in the market. Combined with IBM's StoredIQ technology and Watson Analytics, IBM can provide the technology foundation for data culling, data mapping and machine-learning functionalities.
• IBM's global professional, sales and support services help joint product marketing and sales.

Cautions

• IBM does not have products that address the right-hand side of the EDRM. The newly formed partnership with FTI Technology through reselling the Ringtail platform is intended to support the full EDRM functionality.
• For conventional e-discovery needs that often have been project-based and one-off type of events, or non-IBM shops, IBM's e-discovery solution is too broad and complicated in functionality.
• IBM Atlas eDiscovery Process Management is comparatively IT-resource demanding and more expensive when compared with other popular legal-hold products (for example, Exterro Legal Hold and Zapproved Legal Hold Pro).

kCura

kCura, a pure software player, offers the Relativity platform that supports collection, legal hold, processing, review, analysis and production. Relativity is sold primarily via a wide range of service providers and hosting partners, but the direct sales portion to organizations is gradually increasing. It also can be purchased via a three-year subscription license directly from kCura. Compared with its review technology, collection and processing are newer capabilities. In 2014, kCura released Data Grid, a NoSQL data store supporting a more scalable architecture for Relativity. Relativity Binders, an iPad app, serves mobile users who want to organize and annotate their case documents on the go. Through certification and education programs, kCura fosters a large and growing user community. kCura adopts an agile methodology for rolling out new software features and enhancements.

Strengths

• kCura is committed to developing its e-discovery software product. It has focused on adding and improving the technology capabilities of its Relativity platform to serve all stages of e-discovery needs. Its corporate culture and leadership style are fully aligned with this vision.
• The ecosystem of Relativity users, partners, developer community and service providers continues to grow. The members in this ecosystem jointly contribute to enhancing the software's design, usability and functionality.
• Relativity has become a popular review tool in the market (often first choice for the MSPs), which means a knowledge base for information and often a minimal amount of training required for legal reviewers.

Cautions

• kCura lacks direct experience and relationship in supporting corporations.
• Relativity's collection and legal hold are newer capabilities. They are not as proven and tested as the Relativity review functionality.
• Data visualization is identified as an area for improvement.

Kroll Ontrack

Kroll Ontrack offers data recovery and e-discovery technology and services. Through its ediscovery.com platform, it offers a suite of ediscovery.com capabilities. Ediscovery.com Collect is for the left-hand side of the EDRM, and ediscovery.com Review is for the right-hand side of the EDRM, including ECA and predictive coding. ediscovery.com Manage, a free tool bundled inside ediscovery.com Review, helps consolidate projects and provides interactive dashboards, including financial metrics. Kroll also has ediscovery.com Onsite, an appliance offering. Kroll also offers forensic, processing, document review and consulting services. Kroll has data centers around the globe. Review is offered in three pricing models: bundled, subscription and a la carte. The collection product is offered via a traditional license model. Kroll also hosts kCura's Relativity review and legal hold.

Strengths

• Kroll's global data center infrastructure and in-field resources enable it to handle cross-border investigation and e-discovery projects. It is committed to continue the expansion of its global data center footprint and expertise.
• Kroll articulates a clear vision, supported by a concrete product roadmap, including additional support in its Collect product for Office 365 and SQL Server, enhancements on project progress reporting and cost projection via ediscovery.com Manage, and a set of improvements on ease of use, multimatter management capabilities and ECA.
• The company offers simplified pricing options.

Cautions

• Kroll's parent company, Altegrity, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2015. The impact of this event on Kroll could range from distraction of management to intellectual capital drain.
• In the past three years, Kroll had a high turnover among its top leadership. It will need time to realign its management team.
• Kroll has started to host kCura as a review platform option, in addition to its own product. This strategy may dilute its focus on its proprietary technology development.

LexisNexis

LexisNexis Legal & Professional within LexisNexis offers both e-discovery technology and services. The products include Concordance Evolution, Early Data Analyzer and Law PreDiscovery. Concordance Evolution covers review, analysis and production. Early Data Analyzer is its data culling and ECA tool. Law PreDiscovery is a processing and production tool. These three products can work in an integrated manner to cover processing, review, analysis and production. In March 2015, LexisNexis signed a partnership agreement with BIA, which offers forensic collection, legal hold, data preservation and processing capabilities, with the intention to cover the complete process of e-discovery.

Strengths

• LexisNexis is a strong and trusted brand in the legal profession. Concordance has a long history supporting law firms.
• Pricing for both Concordance and Law PreDiscovery software is reasonable, and there is responsive customer support, making the software a popular choice in the small- to midsize-law firm market.
• In addition to LexisNexis' e-discovery technology and services, the company provides other legal knowledge resources and services; thus, having a bundled deal with LexisNexis could be helpful for legal departments and law firms.

Cautions

• LexisNexis' e-discovery business is concentrated in the U.S., limiting its ability to tackle global cases.
• LexisNexis does not have its own technology to support the left-hand side of e-discovery.
• While LexisNexis has broad brand recognition in the community of corporate legal departments, the majority of its e-discovery customers currently consists of law firms and legal service brokers (LSBs).

Microsoft

Since the release of Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has added and extended features through search services, legal hold and data export to support compliance and e-discovery use cases. With Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013, the e-discovery-related capabilities — Search, In-Place Hold and Export — allow customers to identify and preserve emails, documents and SharePoint sites. The SharePoint portal, eDiscovery Center, supports users to configure search services and manage legal holds. Microsoft has extended all these relevant capabilities — included in Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013 — to Office 365. Skype for Business (formerly Lync) and OneDrive for Business content also can be managed through the eDiscovery Center. In January 2015, Microsoft acquired Equivio, an e-discovery technology focused on ECA and predictive coding.

Strengths

• Data in Microsoft's Exchange and SharePoint are primary e-discovery data sources. Built-in capabilities for in-place hold and preservation on such data satisfy basic requirements for compliance and e-discovery.
• Because Microsoft has a dominating footprint across all company sizes and verticals, there is a good supply of expertise on Microsoft's compliance and e-discovery administration tools.
• The Equivio technology fills in a critical gap in Microsoft's technology capabilities to serve the e-discovery market.

Cautions

• Compared with e-discovery pure-play vendors, Microsoft lacks the width and depth of technology and features.
• Microsoft does not support non-Microsoft content for e-discovery.
• The extent and cadence to which Microsoft will develop and package its e-discovery features — integrating with enterprise content management systems — along with how it will support the right-hand side of the EDRM, are not yet clearly explained on its product roadmap.

Nuix

Nuix is known for its processing capabilities. Nuix's products include eDiscovery, Enterprise Collection Center, Web Review & Analytics, and Legal Hold. Nuix also partners with Zapproved for its Legal Hold Pro product. The software can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, with support for both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Nuix doesn't rely on direct connectors/APIs for extracting text and metadata, as it can process documents directly. Nuix's software is priced on a concurrent user basis, with options for both SaaS and appliance-based offerings. Its technology also extends to other related use cases, such as archive migrations, information governance and information security. In 2014, Nuix formed a partnership with KPMG to deliver forensic and e-discovery services.

Strengths

• Nuix Web Review & Analytics is viewed favorably for small-matter management, an area that other review platforms struggle with but is a common need in enterprises.
• Nuix is adept at identification of relevant content across a wide range of data sources, including many third-party repositories, and its ability to process that content is industry-leading.
• Nuix is finding success in areas such as information governance and security, making it easier to justify investment in corporate enterprises.

Cautions

• Nuix's licensing costs for processing can be expensive relative to other vendors.
• Legal Hold is an area that needs greater product clarity. For example, it is not clear when Nuix Enterprise Collection Center or stand-alone Legal Hold capabilities should be chosen instead of Zapproved's product.
• Better integration is needed between Nuix's information governance and e-discovery products.

Recommind

Recommind, with heritage in enterprise software and known for its predictive coding technology, supports all stages of the EDRM. Axcelerate eDiscovery can perform legal hold, collection, processing, review, analysis and production, with ECA and predictive coding built in. Axcelerate eDiscovery is offered in three different models: on-premises, hosted and SaaS. Pricing is structured based on the deployment options. Recommind has a global footprint for hosting, and it also offers professional services. Throughout 2014, Recommind released a list of enhancements to the Axcelerate eDiscovery platform, which includes the leverage of predictive coding for quality assurance of document production, ease of use and email visualization.

Strengths

• Recommind's e-discovery platform is built on competitive and proprietary search and analytics engines. This provides a strong foundation for its predictive coding functionality. Recommind continues to refine its data analytics capabilities for embedding more ECA features into Axcelerate eDiscovery.
• Axcelerate eDiscovery has full-spectrum EDRM functionality and offers multiple deployment options. Its global hosting operations enable Recommind to handle cross-jurisdiction cases.
• The attention and continued improvement on document production create a rich set of practical features for quality assurance, risk control and automation to a stage of the e-discovery process that is often less discussed and can potentially consume unnecessary resources.

Cautions

• For customers with low volume and less complicated e-discovery needs, Recommind may not be an appropriate option.
• Recommind can be IT-resource-demanding if organizations prefer to deploy it as an on-premises solution.
• The use of Recommind's predictive coding technology still requires high-touch project management or a professional services component.

Symantec

Symantec offers the Symantec eDiscovery Platform powered by Clearwell. This platform is an integrated e-discovery offering that supports all stages of the EDRM, along with ECA. It is offered as an appliance with different capacity configurations, and it is available as a hosted offering through a large number of partners and service providers. The eDiscovery Platform has direct integration with Symantec's archiving solutions: Enterprise Vault and Enterprise Vault.cloud. Symantec also links the eDiscovery Platform to its information governance strategy. Version 8.0 has new connectors to SharePoint and Office 365. In 2014, Symantec also revised its pricing by lowering the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for all perpetual license types and creating a capacity-based subscription model.

Strengths

• The Symantec eDiscovery Platform offers functionality to support all the stages of the EDRM. Direct integration with other products in the information management portfolio helps the technology's appeal for broader information governance use cases.
• Symantec's large global sales force means that the product is easy to buy in all geographies.
• The propensity to integrate with different third-party data repositories (now with Office 365) makes Symantec's eDiscovery Platform a compelling option for corporations that desire to have full control of e-discovery process and technology.

Cautions

• The innovation pipeline for the eDiscovery Platform has slowed during Symantec's acquisition and integration of Clearwell Systems.
• Customer support has suffered negative feedback and needs improvement. Complaints are primarily on responsiveness and the time to escalate issues and get them resolved.
• The split of Symantec's information management portfolio into a separate entity, Veritas Technologies, will need time to realign in leadership and focus.

Ubic

Ubic offers a suite of products for e-discovery. The main product suite is called "Lit i View." Ubic's e-discovery solutions include Lit i View E-Discovery for review, with predictive coding built in; Lit i View Xaminer; and Lit i View Email Auditor for ECA. The Lit i View E-Discovery solution has multiple language support, especially for handling content in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK). Ubic also provides forensic, processing and consulting services. Ubic has a global presence of data centers and in-field sources. Due to its geographical and cultural closeness, the majority of Ubic's business originates from companies in the CJK region. The company has been marketing to extend its ECA tools for cybersecurity use cases, such as proactive monitoring. In 2014, Ubic acquired a U.S.-based e-discovery MSP, TechLaw Solutions.

Strengths

• Ubic delivers its own proprietary data analytics engine for ECA and predictive coding capabilities, giving the company more ability to control the underlying technology engine rather than relying on technology partnerships, which is the common model for the majority of the e-discovery vendors.
• Ubic has extensive expertise in both technology and language support in the CJK region.
• Ubic's responsiveness and agility in support are highly rated by its customers.

Cautions

• Ubic's pricing is data-volume-based, and the vendor sometimes can be inflexible in pricing negotiations.
• Search against high-volume datasets could be time-consuming, and some customers have reported a few cases in which search could take up to several days to complete.
• Outside of the CJK region, customer support skills and knowledge are relatively limited.

Xerox

Xerox Litigation Services within Xerox offers two e-discovery products — OmniX and Viewpoint — both of which provide support for collection, processing, review, analysis (including predictive coding) and production. OmniX, integrated with Xerox's CategoriX predictive coding engine, is a cloud-based review platform. Viewpoint is aimed at buyers seeking to bring e-discovery technology in-house. It also can be accessed via a cloud-based model or deployed as a service using the physical or virtual appliance (that is, for short-term projects in which data needs to remain on-site). Both OmniX and Viewpoint are also offered via a managed service. OmniX supports legal hold through production, and Viewpoint supports collection through production. Both OmniX and Viewpoint deliver processing and review functionality, but Viewpoint is more suited for smaller document collections or upstream tasks, such as ECA. Viewpoint matters can be migrated to the Xerox cloud for further processing, hosting and production. Pricing options include concurrent user, SaaS, appliance-based and managed service. In 2014, Xerox acquired Smart Data Consulting, a service provider of Viewpoint technology.

Strengths

• Xerox Litigation Services offers a wide array of deployment options and combinations of managed services that address a large number of e-discovery use cases and requirements on a global basis.
• Xerox's professional services and domain expertise on e-discovery is very strong.
• Xerox emphasizes a data science approach to complement its e-discovery technology development and acquisitions. Xerox is a good fit for buyers seeking good reporting and data visualization.

Cautions

• Xerox supports only SQL Server databases and a limited connector environment. The company does not expose its APIs.
• Xerox's product portfolio contains overlap among Viewpoint and OmniX. Other than deployment models, there is no clear distinction among the two offerings.
• While Viewpoint is positioned as a complete e-discovery offering, it lacks legal-hold capabilities. Overall, collection is an area in need of improvement for Xerox.

ZyLAB

ZyLAB offers ZyLAB eDiscovery, which is an integrated solution supporting all stages of the EDRM. The company's other products include ZyLAB FOIA for addressing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests; ZyLAB for Investigations for criminal, regulatory and internal fraud investigations; and ZyLAB Intelligent Information Governance for file analysis and classification. Its e-discovery technology architecture is horizontally scalable and can handle large datasets. Multiple language support capability is built into review and analytics. ZyLAB also provides services, such as email archiving and records management. Its products can be deployed on-premises, via SaaS and as a virtual appliance. Its pricing structure matches the different deployment options.

Strengths

• ZyLAB has a well-balanced portfolio with a strong focus on information governance, text analytics and review, appealing to numerous stakeholders through the e-discovery buying cycle.
• ZyLAB's customers are its best advocates and express high satisfaction with the company's responsiveness and attention to requirements.
• ZyLAB continues to expand — noticeably, in North America — by acquiring large government clients and adding marketing and support staff in the region.

Cautions

• Training is an area in need of improvement for ZyLAB.
• ZyLAB may not be a fit for organizations looking to implement a best-of-breed e-discovery approach. ZyLAB's customers tend to be entirely end-to-end.
• Filtering search results is an area that can be improved in the ZyLAB eDiscovery platform.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added

The following vendors were added to this Magic Quadrant:

• Driven
• Microsoft

Dropped

The following vendors have been dropped because they did not meet one or more of the inclusion criteria:

• EMC
• Integreon
• KPMG
• Stroz Friedberg

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

To be included in this Magic Quadrant, a vendor had to sell enterprise software licenses, a software appliance or SaaS conforming to Gartner's definition of SaaS (see Note 2). This Magic Quadrant contains vendors that sell only software licenses, software appliances or software subscriptions, although some of these vendors also either provide services or host third-party technologies.

To be included, a vendor also had to address at least two of three broad functional areas relating to the EDRM. Although buyers have been expressing the desire of seeking end-to-end EDRM functionality, the majority is still buying and collecting toolsets that are fused on one or two areas of the EDRM. As a result, organizations usually have at least two or more pieces of technology either in-house or through MSPs for the full support of e-discovery. The three distinct clusters of technology providers would focus on or have strength on one side of the EDRM:

• Left-hand side of the EDRM: Vendors offer technologies on identification, collection and legal hold. ECA, or what some are calling "EDA," functionality is a required basic technology element. More vendors are adding processing capability as well. The target end users for left-hand-side e-discovery software are IT, compliance and legal departments inside corporations, along with legal service providers that perform this service for clients.
• Right-hand side of the EDRM: Vendors offer technologies on processing, reviewing, analyzing and producing documents, either during ECA or at a later stage of review. Predictive coding or TAR is becoming an essential feature for review. The target end users for right-hand-side e-discovery software are legal professionals (lawyer, paralegal and litigation support) working for corporations, law firms or legal solution providers.
• Information-management-focused: Vendors offer information management or repository functionality, as well as e-discovery functions on the left-hand side of the EDRM — typically, search functions for legal hold, and the collection and export of data from a repository for review. The target end users for this type of software are IT and legal professionals.

Vendors with complete functionality covering the whole EDRM are also included.

In addition, vendors must satisfy quantitative requirements for market penetration and customer base. Specifically, they must:

• Generate at least $20 million in revenue per year from the sale of e-discovery software; at least 10% of its revenue must come from sales that are outside its home region
• Own the intellectual property and copyright to the software
• Have at least 50 customers in production
• Have demonstrated active market participation, including, but not exclusive to, inbound customer inquiries from Gartner customers and prospects
• Have a "significant" presence in at least two geographical regions (note that significant presence refers to revenue and installed base)
• Market and sell in at least two major geographic regions — for example, North America and Latin America or EMEA and Asia/Pacific

The vendors shown in this Magic Quadrant have met these inclusion criteria.

The following list (which is purely representative) details "vendors to watch." This sample set of vendors listed below did not meet one or more of the inclusion criteria for this Magic Quadrant. However, they represent technology providers that are innovative in either technology or delivery models, or both in some cases.

cicayda

Cicayda, a private startup, provides Reprise, which offers Web-based document review, text analytics, ECA and legal-hold capabilities. The company uses a variety of open-source and Web-based components as part of its very modern architecture, including Apache Lucene for search, Elasticsearch for data management, Datomic as its database and Clojure for its programming language. Cicayda offers a simple pricing structure and provides services such as managed review. The company looks to support an array of use cases, including FOIA requests, data mapping for the Internet of Things (IoT) and social media analysis.

Everlaw

Everlaw, a private startup, offers a browser-agnostic and SaaS-only e-discovery solution. Its solution focuses on the right-hand side of the EDRM. The architecture of its technology is created for the cloud, which inherently passes on cloud's benefits of economics and scalability. Everlaw's user interface and workflow are simpler for review users. Its embedded predictive coding engine is proprietary and does not require substantial user training and service support. Everlaw offers a single and all-inclusive pricing model, which is data-capacity-based. Everlaw's current customer base consists mainly of U.S. government agencies and law firms.

Logikcull

Logikcull, a private company, offers a cloud-based e-discovery solution for legal hold, data processing, review and export. Logikcull's Culling Intelligence is the underlying engine for this solution. Compared with traditional e-discovery solutions, Logikcull's design (cloud native) supports a faster and simpler user experience. In addition to supporting traditional business data, Logikcull also supports cloud data, such as Box. Its pricing is subscription-based and has four categories, depending on the level of customer needs: small, starter, advanced and enterprise.

Zapproved

Zapproved, a private company, offers an e-discovery solution for data preservation, collection and processing. Legal Hold Pro is a cloud-based legal-hold technology that has gained market recognition for its design (cloud native), price and easier-to-use features. Zapproved has partnerships with several other e-discovery vendors and many MSPs for reselling its legal-hold product. Data Collect Pro is the company's newer product for data collection and processing. Its current customer base is predominantly corporations.

Evaluation Criteria

Ability to Execute

Gartner evaluates software technology providers on the quality and efficacy of the software capabilities and services integrated with their software that both support e-discovery process management and enable legal users to effectively and efficiently conduct reviews and improve corporate governance. Ultimately, vendors are rated on their ability and the outcome in fulfilling their vision.

Product or Service: This criterion includes the core products and services offered by the vendor that competes in the defined market. This criterion includes current product/service capabilities, scalability, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or partnership. Vendors that address the left-hand side of the EDRM must have instantiation of identification, preservation or legal hold, collection, processing ("culling") functionality and ECA. Vendors addressing the right-hand side of the EDRM must offer processing, review and analysis features, such as search, email threading, concept clustering and predictive coding or TAR. Visualization, workflow and reporting are used to measure the functionality supporting the full spectrum of the EDRM. Intuitive user interfaces, native file format review, production quality control and foreign language support are desirable features.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of management leadership, stability of business operation, the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the business unit will continue to invest in the product, offer the product and advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products. Revenue growth and business expansion trends during the past three years are primary determinants of the viability rating. It does not depend on absolute values but on relative ones (that is, company expansion and customer acquisition rate), and thus seeks to remove the disparities that exist in a market where established and large portfolio vendors compete with startups. This rating is not just numeric, but also takes into account factors such as whether there is a cohesive and strong management team, employee retention and longevity.

Sales Execution/Pricing: This criterion covers the vendor's capabilities in all presales, sales and postsales activities, and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel. Customer ratings of the quality of sales-related activities, and an evaluation of the clarity, competitiveness and simplicity of the vendor's pricing structure, and stability of account management are primary determinants in rating this criterion.

Market Responsiveness/Record: This criterion examines the vendor's ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customers' needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness. It considers the organization's ability to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently. Track record is determined by how quickly a company can respond and innovate to changing market needs.

Marketing Execution: This criterion evaluates the consistency, clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to convey the organization's message to inform and influence the market, promote the brand and the business, increase awareness of products, and establish a positive identification with the products, brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities. For vendors that come from technology markets, presence in legally focused publications and at tradeshows, and membership of professional and trade associations, is important. Equally, for vendors that come from legal markets, presence in technology-focused publications and at tradeshows, and membership of professional associations, is important. All vendors will benefit from an ability to attract and retain industry thought leaders, especially those influential in legal circles. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, vendors must have a clearly articulated product set and roadmap that help buyers understand and purchase.

Customer Experience: This criterion considers the relationships, products and services that enable clients to succeed with the products evaluated. Specifically, this criterion includes implementation experience, and the ways customers receive technical support or account support. It can also include ancillary tools, the quality of customer support, availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on. Customer ratings and feedback, as well as Gartner's client inquiry data, are the primary determinants.

Operations: This criterion evaluates the ability of the vendor to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organization structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the vendor to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis. In addition, the experience of the leadership team in areas such as engagement of legal communities, educational programs and software development are considered.

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria	Weighting
Product or Service	Medium
Overall Viability	Medium
Sales Execution/Pricing	Medium
Market Responsiveness/Record	Medium
Marketing Execution	Medium
Customer Experience	High
Operations	Medium

Source: Gartner (May 2015)

Completeness of Vision

Gartner evaluates software technology providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs, and competitive forces, and how well they map to the Gartner position. Ultimately, vendors are rated on their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunity for the vendor.

Market Understanding: This criterion evaluates a vendor's ability to understand buyers' needs and translate them into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' needs, and can shape or enhance them with their added vision. In the e-discovery market, vendors demonstrate understanding through their interpretation of court opinions on technology usage, case precedents, and existing and emergent case law, and by whether and how they address the market's three segments (law firms, corporations and service providers), and two buying centers (IT and legal end users). We used customers' ratings of a vendor's legal and technical expertise as well as data points for whether they would recommend that vendor.

Marketing Strategy: This criterion includes a clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the vendor and externalized through its website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements. In the e-discovery market, vendors must understand the dual buying centers of legal and IT departments and create appropriate marketing programs to reach them. Effectiveness of marketing strategy was gauged by how frequently vendors appeared on customers' shortlists and how existing and potential customers rated their roadmaps. We evaluated each vendor's goals (whether there is a vision that can be expressed in a single declarative sentence), objectives (whether there are quantitative targets), audience (whether the company clearly understands its current and prospective clients), strategy (whether there is a roadmap tying goals, objectives and audience together), and tactics (whether the company is doing the right things to achieve its objectives).

Sales Strategy: This criterion considers the strategy for selling products that uses an appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates to extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and customer base. The ability to sell and deploy tools quickly and flexibly is important because of the often unforgiving deadlines that regulators and investigators impose on organizations.

Offering (Product) Strategy: A vendor's product strategy includes whether a vendor is an e-discovery "pure play," how reliant it is on selling services in addition to software, its unique value proposition and differentiation, and who its competitors are. Differentiators included broad functionality and scalability encompassing both left- and right-hand sides of the EDRM, the presence or absence of TAR capabilities, support for cloud deployment, new data sources, and multimatter management capabilities.

Business Model: This criterion includes the soundness and logic of a vendor's underlying business proposition. A number of factors were considered: the mixture of corporate, law firm and service provider clients; the mixture of software and services; and the number of service and project management personnel in the vendor's e-discovery group, (as compared with the number of software developers), with a software development model being favored over a service or hosting delivery model.

Innovation: This criterion examines direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes. Included in this criterion is an evaluation of past and future product roadmaps, technology and partnership strategies, acquisitions, and future company and product directions.

Geographic Strategy: This criterion considers the vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography and market. A vendor's ability to generate significant level of revenue outside its native geography is considered a key factor in rating this criterion.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: This criterion is not important at this stage in the market's development. If a company has such a strategy, it is covered by the Market Understanding criterion with its three segments of law firms, corporations and service providers.

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria	Weighting
Market Understanding	Medium
Marketing Strategy	Medium
Sales Strategy	Medium
Offering (Product) Strategy	Medium
Business Model	High
Vertical/Industry Strategy	Not Rated
Innovation	Medium
Geographic Strategy	Medium

Source: Gartner (May 2015)

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders

As the e-discovery software market continues to evolve, the Leaders are characterized by several different capabilities:

• Solid functionality that meets one or more requirements of both the left-hand and the right-hand side of the EDRM.
• Technology offering that distinguishes themselves for strategic adoption with an ambitious roadmap.
• Business models that clearly demonstrate that their focus is software development and sales. (Note: Mixed software and service models do not prevent a vendor from being a Leader as long as the vendor's commitment to software development and technology innovation is evidenced by product roadmaps and the size of its development teams, which should compare favorably with its professional services personnel.)
• A good mix of corporate, law firm, service provider and global jurisdiction buying centers.
• Good performance financially in terms of market share gains and positive growth.

Challengers

Challengers have proven viability, demonstrate market performance and show the ability to exceed customer expectations on technical functionality. They score strongly for their Ability to Execute, but they fall short in some aspects of their vision or ability to improve technology offerings to match the market evolution. Many large and litigious companies continue to pursue hybrid strategies to serve their e-discovery needs — combining both in-house and outsourced capabilities. Some of the Challengers address this aspect of the market very well. They offer their software via multiple models: on-premises, appliance, hosted, on-demand and cloud.

Visionaries

Visionaries have a solid understanding of the market, as demonstrated by domain expertise and commitment to innovation. Several new requirements are emerging in the e-discovery market. Among them, data analytic capabilities for culling down data volume before review, ease-of-use predictive coding during review, and data connectors to new data sources (social and Web content, for example) are factors for Gartner in evaluating Visionaries. Some of the innovative vendors that have matching capabilities to these new requirements do not satisfy one or more of the inclusion criteria.

Niche Players

Niche Players often have a unique approach to the market. Vendors could also be in the Niche Players quadrant because they have to improve the core e-discovery software product. Niche Players may also target a specific segment of the market buyers. Niche Players may have reasonably broad functionality but limited implementation and support capabilities and relatively limited customer bases. Note that while several of the Niche Players have strong presence in the legal community, the focus of this Magic Quadrant favors vendors with software-focused models. Potential clients should consider using these vendors, as their offerings may be the best-in-class for certain project or company requirements.

Context

As one of the most risk-averse sectors, the legal industry continues to accelerate in its technology-powered transformation. This trend has been largely driven by the needs of keeping up with the clients that the legal industry serves, as well as the need to remain competitive in a more cost-conscious economy. The e-discovery market is a representative example of this transformation.

E-discovery has become a well-established practice in litigious countries and markets. Governments, law firms and corporations in common-law jurisdictions and heavily regulated and litigated vertical markets have been rapidly increasing the use of technologies to assist their e-discovery and other investigation processes. Technology adoption patterns, as well as the providers' competitive landscape for e-discovery software, continue to evolve.

This Magic Quadrant will help CIOs, general counsel, IT professionals, lawyers, compliance staff and legal service providers understand the dynamics and landscape of the market for e-discovery software and make the right choice of vendor.

Market Overview

The demand for e-discovery technology and services continues to grow. Gartner estimates that the enterprise e-discovery software marketplace was $1.8 billion in total software revenue worldwide in 2014, an increase of 10.6% from 2013. The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) approximates 12%. Growing regional e-discovery usage for both common-law and non-common-law actions and for governmental investigations expands opportunities through 2018 (see "Market Trends: Contextual and Predictive Technologies Extend the E-Discovery Marketplace").

There are a number of significant changes in this 2015 Magic Quadrant compared with the previous Magic Quadrant published in 2014.

First, migration to Office 365 has set off evaluation discussions and upgrade projects on e-discovery processes and tools (see "The State of E-Discovery in 2015 and Beyond"). This is a common theme: Organizations are in the process of migrating email and documents into Office 365 and need to take a step back on what that means to their established e-discovery process and technology application.

Second, new data sources and increasing concerns about data sovereignty are driving emerging requirements and expanding the consideration of e-discovery scope and technology usage. Organizations have started the dialogue on how to preserve social, Web and perhaps IoT data. One fundamental question is frequently asked: Should these new types of content be subject to the same data preservation rules? Following on this question would be: Could existing technology support these new content types?

Third, organizations want agile and less expensive approaches to e-discovery. Many organizations have realized that the traditional project-based approach to e-discovery are, in many ways, becoming unsustainable. This awareness motivates organizations to seek newer and innovative technologies that support lower cost and faster performance.

Fourth, pricing structure continues to be simplified. The business goal of controlling e-discovery costs by corporations — the ultimate buyers of e-discovery software — has pushed the emphasis on price prediction and transparency. Many established vendors have been reducing the complexity in their pricing structure. Newer vendors, especially the cloud native vendors, have offered much simpler pricing options. This factor, along with competition, is driving the e-discovery costs to be not only more comparable, but also more cost-effective.

Fifth, vendors increasingly expand their offering by deploying their e-discovery software in the SaaS model. Although many offerings are labeled as "SaaS," caution should be given because some of them are really hosted rather than true SaaS. In addition to the benefits of cloud economics and scalability, e-discovery in the cloud is becoming an appealing option if the data source resides in the cloud. This is a new area for e-discovery practitioners. The legal guidance and requirements on how to treat cloud data (social, website, Web email and IoT content) within the e-discovery context is lacking. At the moment, organizations are dealing with the cloud data on an ad hoc basis.

Lastly, another round of market shake-up is emerging. For example, Microsoft has crossed the e-discovery gate by acquiring Equivio, kCura expanded its Relativity platform to collection and processing, and a handful of startups (that is, Everlaw and Zapproved) are steadily gaining customers.