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Another area that can get lumped in with e-discovery is general purpose data searching within an organization. Storage resource management (SRM) is often used in e-discovery to determine what files and data exist, and where they exist. Data searching can either be shallow (macro) or deep (micro). Shallow data searching involves simply looking for and at files. Deep data searching means to look into and at files or objects, as well as applying contextuality, lexicon analysis and other computational linguistic practices or filters.
Knowing what you'll be using the e-discovery tools for will help you find good products or services. Some e-discovery tools available to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are more expensive and provide more capabilities, while others are simple for a lower fee. Also, some are available as a service with different features such as discovery supporting different lexicons (e.g., legal, medical, financial, etc.), litigation hold, an interface with data archiving products, redaction and others. Major vendors with e-discovery tools include EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co., IBM Corp., Microsoft and Oracle, along with smaller firms such as Kroll, StoredIQ and Xobni Corp.
This was first published in June 2010