e-Discovery Software Marketplace Set To Continue High Growth Pace

Worldwide electronic-discovery (e-discovery) software revenue is on pace to total $1 billion in 2009, a 25 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $807.6 million, according to Gartner. In 2010, the market is forecast to surpass $1.2 billion, a 23 percent increase from 2009.

e-Discovery is the identification, preservation, collection, preparation, review and production of electronically stored information associated with legal and government proceedings. e-Discovery technology can be provided as a stand-alone application, embedded in other applications or services, or accessed as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

"Increasingly, more organisations are being confronted with litigation regarding bribery and corruption, foreign corrupt practices, securities and financial fraud, government contracting abuses, and healthcare fraud," said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner. "Such unplanned events underscore the need for more effective enterprise information strategy and information governance policies."

Eid said that the e-discovery market is in a period of simultaneous growth and consolidation that should last through 2011. Market and technology consolidation will continue during the next several years as vendors expand their product and service portfolios, obtain market-centric expertise, and acquire new customer bases. As the e-discovery market shifts from an emerging market to a high-growth market, Gartner expects new vendor entrants and non-traditional competitors to participate through technology partnerships and acquisitions.

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Eid said three important e-discovery market catalysts underscore the importance of linking business goals to IT risks and the ability to manage both. The three core market catalysts are:

- Transparency of business performance as aligned to governance, risk, and compliance regulations and subsequent organisational reporting.

- Mitigating IT risk through the use of real-time and continuous controls monitoring for transactions, segregation of duties, application configuration, and master data.

- Preventing business failure through fraud detection, improved user-level and application-level security, and corruption.