Key eDiscovery and Information Governance Trends Revealed in ZL Technologies and ILTA Joint Survey

MILPITAS, CA--(Marketwired - June 29, 2016) - ZL Technologies, Inc. (ZL), the leader in enterprise information governance, today announced key findings compiled from the 2016 Information Governance Survey hosted jointly with the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA). Survey participants, ranging across a diverse range of industries, represented both in-house and law attorneys, as well as those in other roles closely involved with the eDiscovery process.

The eDiscovery products and services market has steadily grown over the last several years, and is projected to continue its expansion. However, there is a great deal of diversity in the ways that organizations approach the multifaceted process, and the number of business units involved -- including legal, IT, records management, compliance, and often others -- means that there is room for improvement in workflow and communication, as well as consolidation of systems and effort. Survey results largely reflected a high level of IG competency, but also a high level of complexity.

To view the accompanying infographic, please visit here. Key findings include:

The average business reports using products from more than two eDiscovery vendors.

• For those using eDiscovery products in-house, the average number of software providers represented was 2.1, not including individual vendor sub-products, unknown products, or outsourced eDiscovery services.

Despite the proliferation of eDiscovery tools, practitioners prefer single-source, broad functionality.

• Given the choice between an eDiscovery product that has "best-in-breed" EDRM functionality versus an eDiscovery product that has broad, multi-purpose EDRM functionality, 70% of respondents preferred the latter.

Organizations are split on their use of technology to preserve data.

• There is an "all or nothing" approach to legal hold technology; 26% of organizations use self-preservation in all of their cases, while only 20% rely entirely on technology-only preservation. Relatively few organizations used the individual mixed ratio approaches in between where technology and end users both preserved data.

Email and files share content still dominate the eDiscovery process -- for now.

• Participants were asked to order data types from #1-#10 in terms of frequency of their use in eDiscovery; email and file share data were overwhelmingly still #1 and #2, respectively. However, database data, Sharepoint content and non-Sharepoint collaborative content follow, rounding out the top-five data types.

"Information governance is a strategy rather than a product, and our survey results reinforce that," noted Linda G. Sharp, Associate General Counsel of ZL Technologies. "Organizations are as diverse as their choices of their eDiscovery tools and workflows. However, it's clear that there's desire for optimization; more products haven't necessarily led to more efficient practices. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The chaos of eDiscovery's early years has coalesced into concise needs and clearer objectives and it's now a matter of execution."

"ILTA was founded 36 years ago, and in that time, we've seen a radical change in what legal technology means," said Leigh Isaacs, ILTA Volunteer and Program Planning Council Member. "Information Governance is a relatively new concern, but now it's a top priority across business units -- legal included. We look forward to continuing our IG survey series to develop insight of trends over time."

About ILTA

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a volunteer-led, staff-managed association providing the premier environment for peer connections, education, and collective intelligence to leverage the strategic advantages of technology in the legal profession. ILTA's international membership comprises firms and law departments of all sizes and all areas of practice, each sharing a common need to have access to the latest information about products and support services that impact the legal profession worldwide. For more information, please visit the ILTA website.

About ZL Technologies.

ZL Technologies makes Unified Archive® software (ZL UA) to enable large enterprises to manage all unstructured content such as email, files, and instant messages to satisfy corporate needs for eDiscovery, records management, regulatory compliance, information governance, and storage management. By providing singular and comprehensive data management architecture, it also enables business content to be leveraged proactively for analytics and competitive advantage, via ZL Enterprise Analytics™ (ZL EA). ZL UA's unique differentiator is its unified architecture, which consolidates all applications and billions of documents under one platform, thus eliminating today's fractured data silos which significantly raise operating costs, increase legal risk, and derail effective Big Data analytics initiatives. Demonstrating a proven track record with Global 500 customers and strategic partnerships with major players such as Oracle, Unisys, PwC, and SunGard, ZL has emerged as the technology leader in harnessing unstructured "Big Data" for strategic advantage. For more information, please visit www.zlti.com.