Open Text (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), a global leader in enterprise content management (ECM), today announced a major expansion of its eDiscovery capabilities with an early case assessment solution designed to assist organisations in reducing the costs associated with eDiscovery activities. The solution, called Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment powered by Recommind, allows organisations to quickly assess the legal merits of a case and defensibly manage legal holds and collection for discovery, regulatory and compliance requests. With this solution in place, organisations can significantly minimise the need for third-party processing and control the high costs of legal reviews by culling irrelevant information before it goes for review by outside counsel.

To offer the solution, Open Text announced a strategic relationship with Recommind, a leading provider of enterprise search and eDiscovery solutions for the enterprise, to combine its Insite Legal Hold application with the Open Text ECM Suite. The combination not only addresses the critical need for eDiscovery in an age of growing regulatory and legal challenges, it also lets customers tightly integrate eDiscovery within their broader ECM initiatives. Unlike other solutions on the market, customers gain expanded eDiscovery capabilities woven into their overall content, records and email management practices. Customers will also gain the combined support of experts from both Open Text and Recommind. 

Today’s organisations face competing demands of cost pressures in a tough economy, and increasing regulatory and litigation costs. The need for practical solutions that reduce the cost and risk of eDiscovery has never been greater. Corporate data stores are exploding in size and complexity -- the process of identifying, preserving and collecting data for regulations or litigation is a tremendous pain-point for organisations. Many enterprises, however, still rely on manual processes or one-size-fits-all solutions that create more work for IT departments and dramatically raise the cost, risk and time needed to conduct investigations or respond to litigation.

By selecting the right technology for eDiscovery and tying that to an information lifecycle management strategy, you can save your company a ton of money and your IT department a ton of time, said Gartner analyst Debra Logan. Move from a tactical, ad hoc and last-minute response to eDiscovery to a strategic, uniform and proactive approach to information management to position your company to meet legal and regulatory challenges now and in the future.

Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment allows enterprises to explore information where it resides quickly and accurately before it is collected and placed on hold in response to an investigation or lawsuit. This Explore in Place technology is a paradigm shift in legal hold methodology as competitive solutions simply index and aggregate large amounts of data without any ability to determine relevance prior to collection, resulting in the collection, preservation, storage, processing, review and analysis of far more information than required.

The recent financial crisis has highlighted more than ever the need for effective information management. Poor information management is impeding organisations in their ability to understand the legal risks they and their executives face from lawsuits and investigations. With rapidly rising costs and rapidly shortening timelines for performing risk assessment, collecting data, processing and reviewing information, enterprises must be nimble and prepared, said Robert Tennant, Chief Executive Officer of Recommind. Combining our industry leading legal hold and early risk assessment solution with Open Text’s deep expertise in enterprise content management fills a massive need in the enterprise space by providing the only practical, automated, powerful and reliable legal hold solution for organisations around the world.

The days of shrugging off litigation as a cost of doing business are over. Customers are looking for better, proactive and more cost effective ways of meeting legal and regulatory requirements, said Stephen Ludlow, Program Manager for eDiscovery Solutions at Open Text. When combined with an ECM suite that offers essential records management and email management capabilities, Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment offers organisations a complete solution for their litigation and eDiscovery readiness requirements. The risk mitigation and cost control this solution provides is unparalleled in the industry.

With Open Text eDiscovery, Early Case Assessment organisations can:

- Centrally search, explore in place and preserve electronically stored information (ESI) from disparate sources: Directly connect to content in Open Text’s ECM Suite and myriad additional data repositories from a single remote location; gain rapid visibility into relevant keywords, concepts, case issues and content in preparation for the Rule 26(f) meet and confer process; and collect and apply legal holds on only the data necessary for any given proceeding in a highly accurate and defensible manner.

- Reduce the volume of content to be reviewed: Cull document sets by identifying duplicates in user files, emails and attachments; automatically categorise ESI within a hold to reduce the size of the data set.

- Significantly reduce the cost of third-party processing: Export ESI in a hold directly to a review application to reduce or eliminate the need for and costs associated with third-party processing.

Availability

Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment by Recommind is available now.

For more information, please visit: http://www.opentext.com/2/global/sol-products/sol-pro-compliance-governance/pro-ediscovery-early-case-assessment.htm

For more information about Recommind, please visit: www.recommind.com.

About Open Text
Open Text, an enterprise software company and leader in enterprise content management, helps organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Open Text brings two decades of expertise supporting 46,000 customers and millions of users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts to help organisations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit www.opentext.com.