A sneak preview of the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann EDD Survey has been published on EDD Update. This year's survey queried 107 EDD services and software providers, 29 law firms, and 19 corporations and ranked EDD service and software providers using 350 qualitative and quantitative factors. No small feat. My hat is off to these gentlemen.
Ranking anything in any industry is often a contentious affair. There are winners (those ranked), losers (those not ranked), and those not on anyone's radar that are neither winners nor losers. But one thing about the survey is hard to argue with, and that's the disclaimer: "Anyone who makes buying decisions primarily on these rankings or any other generalized rankings is a fool."
The disclaimer does not say a whole lot for the folks who took their time and energy to complete the survey for Mr. Socha and Mr. Gelbmann. But really, the U.S. loves their surveys and polls. And the press releases are already rolling into my e-mail box prior to the more public release of the results that will be published in the August 2008 issue of Law Technology News.
ONSITE3 said it made a top ranking this year, for the fourth consecutive year, with the distinction of being within the top 15 of all e-Discovery service providers polled. Also, Orlando-based Wave Software, a provider of de-duplication, regeneration and export of native electronic data, announced that it has been named a top e-discovery software provider. And, IE Discovery, a provider of discovery management services in identification, preservation, collection, review, analysis, production, and presentation of e-discovery (which just about covers it all but for "creation") has been ranked a top overall provider of e-discovery services, again.
I am sure that ONSITE3, Wave Software, and IE Discovery will not be the only vendors to self-proclaim their ranking in the survey. There will be more to come. But remember the part about the "fools" and know that an e-discovery service for your company will be fact specific. Use the survey to narrow the growing field of providers and investigate further before you bet the farm.
Agreed. Surveys are often only as good as the people who participate and the analysts who interpret the feedback. For comparison, another good survey that included some eDiscovery vendor rankings was last September's AmLaw Tech Survey, in which the Software portion of that survey included a ranked list of vendors. See the question on "What electronic evidence data discovery vendors does the firm use?":
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1189155767182
Posted by: Eric Feistel | July 23, 2008 at 11:24 AM