With the Catalyst Secure investment and the Clearwell hire, VC firms continue to make moves into EDD

11 April 2012 – As information technology and information management and the EDD business model have advanced at an expotential rate these past two years, we have changed our focus a bit on how we cover e-discovery events.  We have been spending more time at the big enterprise information management and innovation/technology conferences hosted by Deloitte, The 451 Group , EMC,  and Gartner.   Often brushing up against the guys and gals with the Big Checks who are jumping into the EDD space.   

As we stated in our LegalTech 2012 coverage (click here) data is the new asset class on so many levels.  As the Gartner Group, McKinsey and DealLogic have all reported, venture capital and private equity firms have invested something like $5 billion last year in companies built around big data, information management, database management and data processing.  

At LegalTech this year we had the chance to attend several presentations being made to  a private equity group whose advisory board includes the founder of The Posse List.  Some companies were seeking funding, or who were just out right “on the block”.  And although technology vendor suite reservations at The London and The Warwick and The Hilton were  down from last year (ask the concierge desk or the bellhops for the scoop; they know everything going on at a hotel) that was probably off-set a bit by the army of VCs and PE folk and analysts who certainly increased in number this year.

And it continues.  Today’s Law Technology News has a piece on the VC investment in John Tredinnick’s Catalyst Repository Systems (with who we work in Asia) and the hiring of former Clearwell Systems CEO Aaref Hilay.   This all comes on the heels of the LexisNexis sale of Applied Discovery to Siris Capital, the Symantec purchase of LiveOffice, and the Guidance Software acquisition of CaseCentral.

For the full LTN post click here.