In a lengthy, but very thorough and inspiring blog posting, Ralph Losey of the eDiscovery Team details the bottom line of estimating eDiscovery costs in what he proposes to be the Bottom Line Driven Proportional Review and Production.

A basis for his proposal is that he claims that no matter what, production costs do matter to the client – a lot – and that it’s actually not difficult to estimate this cost, since it is mostly based on projected review costs, defensible culling, and best-practices for review.

Therefore, for Losey, and for any smart project manager, establishing a budget is imperative and is a key first step. It is the bottom line that drives the document review and keeps the costs proportional.

Important points for an eDiscovery Budget

As part of the eDiscovery budget, Losey highlights several points to estimate an effective document review budget:

• Stressing a budget at the beginning of a project that is proportionate to the monies and issues of the case is key 
• After analysis of the case merits and determination of the maximum expense for production proportional to a case, the responding party makes a good faith estimate of the likely maximum number of documents that can be reviewed within that budget
• The producing party then uses smart search techniques and quality controls to find the documents most likely to be responsive within the number of documents that the budget allows

Of course, as Losey points out, there is still a lot of uncertainty when predicting review costs per document, however estimates should be realistic, proportionate, accurate, and use best practices.

Losey’s New Gold Standard for Review and Search

Therefore, in hopes of replacing the old methods of document review unassisted by technology, Losey’s quest for a new gold standard for review and search targets the issues directly and with a refreshing and realistic point of view. He includes points such as: more training, direct supervision and feedback, collaboration between attorneys and technologists, strategic and mutual cooperation between opposing counsel, and even new tools and psychological techniques to keep reviewers engaged in projects. 

Losey reminds us that all cases, data, matters, situations are different. Even though he offers examples and estimates, it is essential to know your data, the matter, and utilize a hybrid of collaboration, human review and technology. 

Sfile’s Answer for Production Estimates

Of particular interest to us at Sfile is his initial claim that clients really do care about production costs. We completely understanding. Sfile innovates to reduce and even eliminate cost risk by advancing technologies to reliably and effecienty deliver insight while creating intuitive and productive experiences for end users. In addition to our exceptional and knowledgable professionals, Sfile provides a price offering that directly targets production costs. Sfile’s End-to-End Electronic Discovery with Pricing InsuranceTM pricing model includes native, TIFF, or PDF production of up to 10% of ingested data and guarantees discounted production rate for data in excess of 10% of ingested data. Thus, creating a true end-to-end price for eDiscovery.

Overall, Losey’s theme of appropriate and realistic cost estimates and strategies for efficient and valuable review teams runs deep and evidently shows that he is passionate about this goal. He suitably closes his article by simulating a motivational speech after Martin Luther King’s and John Lennon’s grand dreams:

“I dream of a day where man and computer work together to bring truth and justice for all, not just the elite few who can afford it now. I dream of a day where e-discovery is affordable and used in all size cases…I have a dream of a new method of technology assisted discovery, where Man and Machine work together to find the core truth...”

This is definitely something that we agree on with Losey and that our Sfile team shares – a mission to fulfill the dream for affordable eDiscovery for all size litigation cases. 

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model

Launched in May 2005, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) was designed to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market – a problem indentified in the 2003 and 2004 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery surveys. 

As corporations continue to face the challenge of Big Data management with greater demands and inquiries on electronically stored information for litigation, regulatory compliance, or corporate investigations, following this simple EDRM eases the complexities involved in this process. Therefore, whether you are in-house counsel, corporate IT, a vendor or a law firm, the EDRM allows for everyone to understand and follow best practices to manage their eDiscovery from the initial management of electronically stored information to the discovery, productions and presentations. 

Information Management & Identification

• Establish a plan to manage electronically stored information (ESI) from creation through the final stage of disposition 
• Identify and locate potential sources of ESI and determine the scope 

Preservation

• Establish a plan to preserve potentially large sets of information with defensibility, consistency, proper documentation, and diligence
• Identify how to efficiently preserve in a possibility of multiple global locations, platforms and formats
• Prevent the risks of spoliation and sanctions related to destruction and transfer of evidence without interrupting business processes

Collection

• Collect & Analysis Data
• Data Recovery/Extraction
• Hard Drive Imaging & Analysis 
• Extensive file analysis of data stores (de-duplication, metadata extraction)
• Strict and defensible Chain of Custody for all data

Sfile Partners leverage the Sfile HPC Engines to process all sizes of data from 1GB to "Big Data" to rapidly gain insight using our analytic tools and reports.

Processing, Review, Analysis, and Production
Using one of Sfile’s greatest and unique advantages, the processing of ESI at an average rate of over 165 GB/hr in a single batch, partners leverage Sfile to quickly establish the scope of relevant data. ESI Processing includes:

• Extraction of PST files
• ESI analysis 
• Culling
• DeDuplication 
• DeNISTing
• Indexing

Review
With integrated Enterprise Content Management and Document Review Tools, Sfile is an ideal cloud based hosted platform to perform early case assessment and legal review jobs of all sizes from gigabytes to multiple terabytes for one to thousands of users. Our most raved about features include:

• Easy to uses and intuitive online experience
• Integrated native document viewer with no imaging conversion required
• Advanced search and filter options
• Sharing and collaboration features

Analysis
With the ability to perform analysis of all types including metadata, keyword, dates, and a number of email and file filters, coupled with Sfile's unprecedented processing speeds, stake holders are able to get greater matter insight with faster data analytics.

Production
Sfile's integrated production tools and services offer multiple forms of document production capabilities including native file, TIFF and PDF formats. Additionally, our professional services team stands ready to handle even the most complex request with the most flexible and customizable features such as:

• Produced images can be endorsed with bates numbering and other branding text
• Redacted sections of documents are removed from the extracted text within load files 
• Export to load file formats such as Concordance and Summation or a number of other eDiscovery systems

Sfile's partner network of Certified Computer Examiners (CCE) often serve as expert witnesses and offer defensibly sound best practices to assure the confidence required to meet any challenge. Sfile's network of CCE partners stand ready to deliver professional services to deliver:

• Exhibit preparation, including handling and testing of different kinds of exhibition file formats
• Case Management solution to support key litigation functions such as service of pleadings, court orders and discovery productions
• Evidence archiving and hosting with ability to configure system for global data treatment

Offering a full end-to-end eDiscovery solution to control costs, reduce risk and provide a wide variety of flexible technology solutions, Sfile and its partner network provide a proactive and complete approach for managing all stages of the eDiscovery process.

Continuing to deliver game changing advantages that create real answers to the market’s demand for meaningful solutions

Sfile understands that enterprise content and data management solutions are not a “one-size fits all.” Big Data has become a key basis of competition, growth, and security, and is rapidly becoming a disruptive force that will change your current data management methods.

As a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative technology solutions, Sfile has extensive experience working and customizing enterprise solutions for top Fortune 500 companies and AMLaw 200 law firms to meet their challenges of Big Data management. 

Sfile’s new product offering of End-to-End eDiscovery with Pricing Insurance^TM eliminates the economic risk associated with eDiscovery by targeting the unpredictable cost of document production. This product offering is offered through a simple and predictable pricing model and includes the following:

• ESI Processing & Culling
• Deduplication & deNisting
• Image OCRing
  
• Date, Concept, & Keyword Filtering
• Advanced Searching Capabilities
• 1 Year of Online Hosted Repository with Collaboration & Standard Document Review
  
• Unlimited Users
• SAS 70 Data Center
  
• Native, PDF, or TIFF Production of Up To 10% of Ingested Data INCLUDED
• Guaranteed Discounted Production Rate for Data in Excess of 10% of Ingested Data
  

As businesses demand more secure collaboration and sharing functions for managing enterprise content and large data sets to meet legal and regulatory compliance, Sfile’s platform seamlessly enables users to organize, manage, share, preserve, and collaborate with documents in one single platform that includes the following:

• Unlimited users with customized role-based security rights
• 1 year of initial hosting with no monthly fees
  
• Access to data from anywhere and from any mobile device
• Zero-footprint, web-based solutions – no plug-ins 
• Integrated native document viewer with no imaging conversion required
• Enterprise Advanced Search with smart filtering options
• Defensible disposition and preservation of legacy and working datasets
• Secure SSL Encrypted Connectivity
• SAS 70 Type II Certified Data Center (US)
• Safe Harbor Compliant 
• 24/7 Performance and Threat Monitoring with multi-level alert protocols

Understanding the time and the heavy cost associated with front-end processing of Big Data and large collections, we have leveraged our high performance computing engines to offer Pure Native Processing at unprecedented speeds and scalability. For a simple and predictable price, we convert large native datasets from PST and user files to TIFF or PDF with a standard load file of choice with the Sfile Pure Native Processing that includes:

• ESI Processing & Culling
• Extraction of archive contents, deduplication, deNisting
• Date, Concept, & Keyword Filtering  
• Standard Load File Creation

From two-party to multi-party complex matters, eliminate the logistics of paper production and delivery and manage all your PRP litigation matters with Sfile eServe, a case management platform designed to support key litigation functions such as service of pleadings, court orders and discovery productions. Based on a monthly subscription, this includes:

• Unlimited Postings, Users, Downloads, Storage
• Monthly Activity Reports
• Quality Control Audit Reports

Sfile’s global partner network of over 50+ partners nationwide and in the UK, positions us as a premier eDiscovery technology solution capitalizing on the efficient use of highly available resources and valuable partner expertise, such as:

• CCE Certified Computer Expert Witnesses
• Hard Drive Imaging & Analysis
• Data Recovery/Extraction
• Collection & Preservation Analysis
• Computer Expert Witnesses
• Email Investigations
• Security Audits
• Incident Response
• Large Bulk Scanning
• All Grades of Scanning (B&W, Color)
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• LDD (Logical Document Determination)
• Document Coding

For more strategic methods to manage daily operations efficiently, effectively, and economically, Sfile’s team of experts work with your organization to customize and implement technology solutions to optimize internal workflows, including operations such as:

• Records Management and Retention
• Accounts Payable and Receivables
• Bill of Landings (BOLs) Management
• Digital Mailroom Services
  
• Day-to-day Document Management
• Litigation Document Support

Whatever approach you wish to take to meet the daily challenges of document management to eDiscovery to Big Data processing and analysis, Sfile can customize a solution to fit your needs.

While our focus is not on Data Collection, we do have at hand a readily available and knowledgeable partner network that is partly made up of computer forensic leaders. Now for those of you that didn’t know, Sfile just jumped on the Google Plus bandwagon, so while doing research on Google Plus and Gmail data, we developed a deep interest of how this data is collected from a widely used and web-based mail system.

Therefore during this slow holiday week, we picked a select number of our forensic partner’s brains by conducting a poll to see what forensic tools they use or recommend for collecting client Gmail and we received some interesting feedback.

We found that most of our forensic partners use IMAP connection tools such as Aid4Mail to identify and collect Gmail messages. They have found that tools such as this are reliable, affordable, easy to deploy and easy to use. On the other hand, and depending on the data, some of our forensic network set up the email account as POP3 and then use Outlook to load the emails into a PST file.

We learned that there are two ways that devices and clients can communicate with Gmail, POP (one-way communication path) and IMAP (two-way communication path). However, we also found that even Google itself recommends using IMAP over POP. IMAP provides a better method to access messages from multiple devices and ensures that new mail is accessible from any device at any given time.

We realize that data is never simple and there always different challenges such as access, verification, and authentication. Therefore, we pose this question to you, which collections tools do you use or recommend?

For a referral to one of our trusted computer forensic partners throughout the nation, please contact Sfile.

Sfile End-to-End Electronic Discovery with Pricing Insurance^TM

Sfile continues to deliver game changing advantages that create real answers to the market’s demand for meaningful solutions from our “Techonomy” leaders.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) November 18, 2011 - Today, Sfile Technology Corporation, a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative workspace solutions, announces its newest product offering, Sfile End-to-End Electronic Discovery with Pricing Insurance^TM.

This new offering targets litigation support providers and their clients, seeking an end-to-end eDiscovery solution with an equally transparent and predictable end-to-end price. After considerable engineering efforts to create truly powerful processing technology, Sfile continues to deliver game changing advantages that create real answers to the market’s demand for meaningful solutions from our “Techonomy” leaders. The result is a new model for pricing that measures the very real risk of the entire electronic discovery process, factors in quantum advances in technology, and delivers new pricing paradigms that offset that risk with guaranteed maximum price exposure.

Recent commentaries circulating strong opinions about eDiscovery pricing models further demonstrate that the main issues remain to be price inflation and unpredictability, disconnection between needs and limits, and even transparency of the actual pricing itself.

"With the inclusion of a “price insurance” policy, Sfile eliminates the economic risk associated with the unpredictable processing-to-production cost. Finally, a solution that grants peace of mind to all involved in the eDiscovery process."

With breakthrough ESI processing speeds of 154 gigabytes per hour, and ‘native file to black-and-white TIFF’ production with industry-standard load files, at the incredible rate of 6 minutes per gigabyte, Sfile is by far leading the processing-to-production experience. Such technology performances reinforce Sfile’s capability to offer huge efficiencies to the marketplace with very little risk and at a greater cost-benefit to our partners and end-users.

Sfile End-to-End Electronic Discovery with Pricing Insurance^TM is offered to our partner network at the industry’s first $100/GB ingestion rate, which includes the following features in a cloud-based SaaS Platform:

•     ESI processing and analysis
•     De-duplication
•     De-NISTing
•     Keyword filtering
•     Date filtering
•     Concept filtering
•     Advanced searching
•     1 year of online hosted repository with collaboration and document review functionality
•     Unlimited users
•     SAS 70 data center
•     Native, tiff, or pdf production of up to 10% of ingested data INCLUDED
•     Guaranteed discounted production rate for data in excess of 10% of ingested data at $250/GB

“With the addition of pricing insurance and the advances afforded by Sfile’s HPC Massive Parallel Processing Engine, we have created a true end-to-end price for eDiscovery where cost can be as low as $100/GB and is guaranteed to never exceed $325/GB to our partners. The more you ingest into Sfile, the more you save,” says Frank Perez, CEO of Sfile. With the value added by our professional partner network, end-user pricing should be significantly impacted in the marketplace delivering true value and predictable pricing to end-users.

To find out more on how to take advantage of this incredible offering for any size job, from 1 GB to multiple TBs, or about becoming a partner, please email us at info@sfile.com.

About Sfile

Sfile is a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative workspace solutions designed to support electronic discovery and document review. Sfile’s solutions are offered through an international network of channel partners and hosted in Sfile’s data center. The Sfile platform is delivered in a true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and operates in a multi-tenant environment with high performance parallel processor engines to support ESI processing and analysis. This enables Sfile to offer a market-changing disruptive pricing model that immediately provides economic benefits to Channel Partners, Law Firms and Corporations. Sfile can be found on the web at http://www.sfile.com.

For more information regarding Sfile's press release, please contact press@sfile.com.

Transforming Commodity Servers into High Performance Computing Servers

With over 25 years of knowledge and experience building technology to provide worldwide enterprise content and knowledge management solutions for organizations, Sfile is pleased to introduce the latest in data processing which promises quantitative leaps in accuracy, quality, and speed. Sfile’s HPC processor leverages the latest multi-core processors to split the work of ESI file analysis and TIFF productions between distinct cores using our proprietary patent-pending parallel processing technology.

Technology

Efficiencies

With Sfile, all data that is imported goes through our ESI Analysis and processing engines for normalization and optimization. Sfile’s engine robustness ensures data is processed with no additional time lapse and provides greater cost-benefits. 

Sfile Technology Corporation, a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative workspace solutions offered through a disruptive end-to-end pricing model, is proud to announce today the proven and unprecedented processing speeds of the Sfile HPC Predictor Engine.

Houston, Texas (PRWEB) November 16, 2011 - Sfile Technology Corporation, a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative workspace solutions offered through a disruptive end-to-end pricing model, is proud to announce today the proven and unprecedented processing speeds of the Sfile HPC Predictor Engine. The Sfile HPC Predictor Engine is a supercharged massive parallel processing engine with an integrated, proprietary, patent pending technology which leverages the latest multi-core, multi-processor commodity servers.

With such innovation, the talented development team at Sfile is indeed transforming commodity servers into High Performance Computing Servers. The Sfile HPC Processor for ESI gives our partners the unique advantage of a risk-based pricing model to predict future outcomes based on real world experiences to disrupt the inefficient and risky practice of data being transferred from one system to another. With the advantage of the HPC Predictor Engine for parallel processing, Sfile achieves an average rate of processing electronically stored information at 154 gigabytes per hour on one industry standard server – where industry claims averages of 76 gigabytes per hour.

Along with our fast ESI processing speeds, the Sfile HPC Processor can convert native files to black and white TIFF images for document production, with an industry-standard load file, at an incredible rate of 6 minutes per gigabyte! This yields unheard-of performance results in both the processing and production stages, which allow us to offer huge efficiencies and cost savings into the marketplace while at the same time, creating a high degree of predictability to overall eDiscovery cost. “With this advantage and our ability to manage price risk, Sfile will be able to extend even greater value and cost savings to our partners and in turn, end users,” says Kevin O’Connell, President of Sfile Technology Corporation.

For an ever growing and evolving eDiscovery industry that demands new pricing and performance models, this advantage is essential. The proprietary and faster data processing technology allows Sfile to deliver high-quality solutions to its partners and provide realistic prices for eDiscovery services. The Sfile HPC Predictor Engine extends the reach of discovery and its status as the premier eDiscovery technology solution by capitalizing on the efficient use of highly available resources. According to CEO, Frank Perez, “Sfile’s HPC Predictor Engine technology has only barely been tapped. In the near future, Sfile will be able to offer richer data analytics and new product offerings that will fully take advantage of this new technology.”

Sfile’s leadership and ongoing innovation clearly demonstrates its ultimate vision to leverage creative engineering to change the economics of marketplaces with disruptive technology. According to Mr. Perez,

“The innovators in our marketplace are looking beyond traditional methods and finding solutions to all sorts of problems. Big Data is a reality and we have to adapt in order to face this tidal wave threatening to overwhelm businesses everywhere. Technology like the HPC Predictor Engine will not only defend us against this threat, but will be leveraged to empower us to gain better insight and even greater possibilities. The future is bright.”

About Sfile

Sfile is a leading provider of Big Data Processing and Analytics with a SaaS-based delivery of eDiscovery, litigation support, and collaborative workspace solutions designed to support electronic discovery and document review. Sfile’s solutions are offered through an international network of channel partners and hosted in Sfile’s data center. The Sfile platform is delivered in a true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and operates in a multi-tenant environment with high performance parallel processor engines to support ESI processing and analysis. This enables Sfile to offer a market-changing disruptive pricing model that immediately provides economic benefits to Channel Partners, Law Firms and Corporations. Sfile can be found on the web at http://www.sfile.com.

Just like a name is usually the first thing we learn about a person or a product, a matter and description name is the first attribute one will learn from your review site.

This is where you can set the stage for your audience and brand yourself. Whether you simply setup a “demo site” to only be used as a personal resource, or setup a unique matter such as “ABC Electronic Case Management Platform” for whenever an opportunity arises for marketing - make sure you set your stage.

How you communicate and introduce your site is important. 

Demo Site - It's your product
By default, a partner’s demo site will be given the generic “Demonstration Repository” title by your Sfile Engagement Manager.
 
However, to fully take advantage of your own private label demo site, you can call it….pretty much anything. So think of it this way, we provide you with the technology and you can call it and use it as you like; combined with your existing services or as a completely separate technology offering. We have seen many creative names for repositories, such as the typical eDiscovery terms, to names that pertain to regional locations, a kind of derivation from the company name, etc.

Example of a matter site set up for internal repository and management operations for a magazine

Review Site by Matter - Design your own kind of online environment
This is where you can get your creative juices flowing, as almost every matter and review teams you are involved with are essentially different – especially in litigation. It is recommended that you use key words that are related to your type of review, such as:

• Analytic Review
• Case Management
• Early Case Assessment
• Unified Electronic Discovery Platform

This will very much work in your favor, as this also shows the versatility of the type of reviews that Sfile can support throughout the full litigation process.

How to Change the Name and Description

1.    Access Settings from the Administration section

2.    From the Settings Control Panel, in the top left, you will see options to change the Name and Description of the site.

 

3.    Make sure to Save Settings at the bottom right of the Control Panel before returning to the Home Page.

It’s easy to almost overlook this small feature to customize, but its part of branding your technology. So, get creative with the name of your matter site and make sure it represents the capabilities and quality of your company, services and yourself.

Smarter, Faster Processing Speeds

With almost perfect timing, EDDUpdate recently posted a blog entry titled, “The Truth about Processing Speed.” It is great that Albert Barsocchini brought this important topic to light and posed some very good questions, as there is a lot of confusion and apprehension to the true facts behind processing speed. The software engineers here at Sfile applauded the comments and wanted us to share with you how we address these questions.

More...

Let’s start with the basics: a company logo.

A good clear company logo is a great way to remind your clients of your services whenever they access the demo site. It represents a powerful extension of your technology offerings and security that their data is represented by you, their trusted services provider.

However, like with all things graphic, we do have the following limitations for your logo image:

• JPEG is preferred
• Logo with a white background
• Size limitation of 173 pixels wide by 34 pixels tall

The following are example logos of what would best fit in a private label Sfile demo site.

Get creative. Logos can be used to represent your company, your clients’ company, or even the matter at issue. Let us know if you need any help with graphics or modifying your logo.