Global eDiscovery market controlled by Autonomy and Symantec

The global eDiscovery market has been forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.56% through to 2015, with the industry expected to reach a value of US$9.9 billion by 2017.

Market growth is set to be fuelled by the increasing number of civil litigation cases, the increase in market consolidation, increasing adoption of predictive coding, growing risk mitigation activities in organisations, increase in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation and growth of record management across various industries.

Electronic discovery refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information in electronic format (often referred to as electronically stored information or ESI). This data is subject to local rules and agreed-upon processes, and is often reviewed for privilege and relevance before being turned over to opposing counsel.

Data is identified as potentially relevant by attorneys and placed on legal hold. Evidence is then extracted and analysed using digital forensic procedures, and is reviewed using a document review platform. Documents can be reviewed either as native files or after a conversion to PDF or TIFF form. A document review platform is useful for its ability to aggregate and search large quantities of ESI.

As the adoption and popularity of eDiscovery solutions are increasing, large enterprises are acquiring pure-play vendors to enter the market. This helps these large enterprises increase their presence in various technology markets, gain technological expertise, and enhance their product portfolios. Several large vendors such as HP and Symantec have adopted such acquisition strategies, and this trend is expected to continue in the future.

Such moves as Symantec acquiring Clearwell and Hewlett-Packard acquiring Autonomy signal an industry-wide trend that has pushed the number of firms down at an estimated average annual rate of 2.0% over the five years to 2011, to 612 businesses.

Key players currently dominating the eDiscovery market include Autonomy, FTI Technology LLC, Hewlett-Packard Co., Symantec Corp., and ZyLAB Technologies. Of the vendors, Autonomy holds a 12.2% market share, while Symantec holds 7.9%.

For more information on the global eDiscovery market, see the latest research: Global eDiscovery Market

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