On the Mark

Welcome back, everybody!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and a great close to their 2007.

Last night as I watched the Patriots beat the Giants in their march toward an undefeated season, I was reminded of a recent quote from Tom Brady.  It seems that two weeks ago an opponent attempted to pull a verbal Joe Namath and “guarantee” a victory over the Patriots.

This type of stunt is best left to Namath himself.

Brady and the Pats said nothing, and worked their standard game plan of methodically eviscerating their opponents, specifically one defensive player gifted with “a mouth that shot itself in the foot.” After the game, when Brady was asked about what his now-beaten adversary had guaranteed, Brady said only:

“Well done is better than well said”

Great quote!

And Brady reminded everyone the quote belongs to Benjamin Franklin.

I bring this up for a reason. I’ve recently been reading some industry blogs and one in particular also reminds me of a mouth determined to shoot itself in the foot. 

For the record, I guarantee nothing. I offer only my sleep-deprived but hopefully lucid observations of the last seven months and point to the mercurial rise and acceptance of the MetaLINCS product by our community in the governnment and private sectors.

The way I see it, two of the biggest, highest-profile financial institutions in the world are now using our software to give them the competitive advantage in litigation by minimizing risk and reducing spend. I see others in my crystal ball, too.

Within the last two weeks we’ve added two top-tier international law firms and a leading litigation services consulting firm to the mix. They’re all floored by our technology and quickly embracing the advantages they now have over their competitors in the legal space.  My crystal ball shows me others on the horizon.

Within the last six months, I’ve seen our technology go up against all the usual suspects. I’ve seen us be the last one standing (tall) when the global creme-de-la-creme of accounting firms chose us. In fact they’ve just entered the e-discovery services market with our technology.

Several service providers have talked to us about bringing our technology to their own offerings menu.  In fact, one is probably signing while you read this entry. (DONE! - announcements to follow)

And this product has gained the recognition it’s honestly earned among analysts around the country.

I’ve watched a $12-billion company take a very hard look at this marketplace, understand who has value and who doesn’t and then acquire MetaLINCS to serve as the cornerstone of a developing e-discovery offering. Stay tuned.

So 2008 is showing more promise than anyone could have imagined. I’m  watching our product being vetted by prominent organizations in the pharm, communications and insurance verticals and I fully expect some in each of those ranks to follow the financial players and adopt our technology.

I’ve got old acquaintances in the business calling me to set up lunch “just to talk” about our offering, because now they  want to get rid of the stopgap devices they purchased in the last two years and step up to our application.

So I’ll close here and wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year in 2008.

It looks to be a great one here — I hope you’ll be with us for the ride.

All the best.

-On the Mark 

p.s - good luck D Downing with your Pats. Cheers to Bill B. and Lawrence L.

 The witty parody to follow is from the desk of my colleague, David Downing.

`Twas the night before ‘Meet and Confer,’ when all through the team
Not a creature was leaving, not even the lead supreme;
The evidence was buried across the IT systems so deep,
Hopelessness was spreading and there would be no sleep;
The prosecution were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of data bits danced in their heads;
Data was collected and finally indexed,
But analysis was just starting, without the subtext.

When from the hallway there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the conference room I flew like a flash,
Tore open the doors and there was a big splash.
The computer on the table of the conference room shows,
Another set of data objects to be decomposed.

When, what to my wondering eyes could never imagine,
But patent-pending software, with a processing engine.
With content analysis, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be MetaLINCS.
More rapid than eagles the complex data came,
And it whistled, and shouted, and dealt with them by name;
“Now, Email! Now, IM! Now, Word and Powerpoint!
On, Excel! On, Backups! On, PDFs and management!
To the top of the org! To the ends of the sprawl!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the top the processing flew,
With concepts and threads, and social networks too.
And then, in a twinkling, I saw on the screen,
The visual analysis of people, data and all in between.
As I looked in amazement, and was turning around,
Down the hallway the rest of the team came with a bound.

Ready for review, from highlighting to flagging,
And annotation too - but we’re not bragging;
A bundle of software that has my laughter back,
And now there’s early case assessment too, I quack.
Our searches — how they twinkled! Statistical analysis how merry!
Thread analysis was like roses, Categorization like a cherry!
The de-duplicates were tied up like a bow,
And people analysis was as white as the snow;

Indexing captured and held tight in its teeth,
With database creation presented like a wreath;
Accessing content with a little round belly,
That shook it all out, like a bowlful of jelly.
Contextual and content searches beyond basic,
Transforming content way beyond classic,
And I laughed as I saw bits benign, not toxic;

In a wink of the eye and a twist of the head,
I soon understood I had nothing to dread;
It left out not a word, but went straight to work,
And finished all the investigations, then turned with a jerk;
Organizing it all, leaving nothing to chance,
And avoiding the problems of a continuance;
It gave to the team comprehensive cool tools,
Allowing us dreams of lots more boondoggles,
But I heard it exclaim, ere it moved out of sight,
“Happy E-Discovery to all, and to all a good-night.”

Happy Holidays Everybody

(special thanks to Sheila Baker, ghost-writer of Christmas present)

It’s a good day here at On the Mark.

Let me explain why.

One of the many challenges a start-up company faces in its efforts to gain market traction is the nagging perception (and many times the reality) that its lack of size and resources present unique risks a customer would not likely encounter in doing business with a larger, more well-established competitor—regardless of how much better the start-up company’s technology and product offering may be.

An easy way to erase this challenge is to be acquired by an industry heavy hitter with a bigger and more comprehensive market vision, one in which the start-up can leverage its core technology and business model assets while fitting nicely into the bigger picture.

I’m happy to report that today, with the announcement that Seagate Technology has signed an agreement to acquire MetaLINCS, we can now overcome any misperceptions about our resources and staying power.

Seagate Services is a division of Seagate, the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives. Seagate Technology is a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It has deep pockets, a strong management team, a legacy of innovation and, most importantly, a new mission in which MetaLINCS and its cutting-edge content analysis technology will play an important role, that is to help business customers protect and manage valuable company information.

Today Seagate Technology sends a clear message to the E-Discovery community: We’ve come to play.

I caught up with Ramón Núñez, our CEO here at MetaLINCS. As you can imagine, he’s been a bit busy of late. But Ramón took the time to tell me:

“MetaLINCS’s early successes in the E-Discovery market are a clear indication that there is a big demand for innovative solutions to what has become a strategic business problem to most corporations. With its substantial resources and unique market vision, Seagate Technology will help us expand our market reach and accelerate the delivery of the most comprehensive E-Discovery platform and associated services.”

Corporations are quite aware of Seagate and its absolute global reach in hard-drive and disc storage technology. Corporations and their counsel are also aware of EVault, a Seagate company that has compelling disk-to-disk backup technology, E-Discovery data recovery and hosted review services and Seagate Recovery Services, the first ISO certified data recovery company. When you add the deep analytics and in-house capabilities that MetaLINCS brings to the table, the sum of the parts is very impressive.

I’ll be writing more here about this major industry news and bringing you commentary – lots and lots of commentary, I suspect! — from the community’s thought leaders.

To read more about this, here’s some additional info.

Seagate Services

PR News Wire - Yahoo

 On the Mark

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives

Please check back for On the Mark blog at 12:30 EST.

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.