On the Mark

I’d like to take a minute to touch upon the legal-hold software market as we all march into the end of our year. Emphasizing the importance of legal hold and retention to my readers is preaching to the choir. But it is worth mentioning that the software solutions market now is occupied by more than just the PSS Systems “Atlas” product.

Atlas is certainly the big daddy, with an impressive install base and the lion’s share of the market. When I was making the decision for a legal-hold solution for a previous employer, the choice was simple: Write your own or adopt PSS’s Atlas. We adopted Atlas, which is the big daddy for a big reason.  It gives corporate entities a very effective and defensible process for their retention and hold requirements.

Many companies attempted to hawk unfinished work-flow pieces that were clearly not ready to compete with PSS Atlas. They were also unready for the market with respect to their feature sets.

Two other organizations are now listing legal-hold solutions for the corporate world.  At the ILTA trade show in Orlando back in August,  I learned of Exterro’s entry into the legal-hold software market. While I have not had the deep drill-down I was hoping for, I’ve ascertained that it is actively marketing a solution.  I suspect there is a work-flow component built in, which would make sense. 

The next is Orchestria, which Dan Junk told me has a product that can help corporate clients in their legal-hold and preservation endeavors. Again, I’ve not been able to do a true apples-to-apples comparison, but I suspect as this market matures I will gain quite a bit more insight into both Exterro and Orchestria’s offerings.  Look for part two of this post in first week of February.

<late addition>

OK - While typing the blog post above on Sunday night, Monday morning brings a press release about Zantaz/Autonomy legal-hold offering. Again, as with the two others mentioned above, I will be adding this to the drill-down mix.

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