
While 2010 opened on a positive economic note, in the past five-working days, I have had difficult conversations with three different organizations about additional, mid-year budget cuts. In all three cases, these multi-national corporations have apparently decided that their economic outlook warranted a downward adjustment. All three have started doling out additional Operating Expense (OpEx) cuts. In one case, a mandatory headcount reduction was decreed; in the other two, business managers were given the flexibility to choose between staff and other operating expense cuts.

IDC's 2009 Corporate eDiscovery Technology Trends Survey concludes that among the most litigious and highly regulated industries, average ESI collection volumes per matter are rising; At the same time, corporate eDiscovery technology budgets are flat or declining. The early results of the 2010 study suggest a slight improvement in budgets; however, the ESI volume trends persist. The corporate litigants' challenges greatly influenced the product and service priorities of the technology vendor community, and are reflected in the product announcements during LegalTech NYC 2010 (Feb 1-3). This year, vendors announced solutions that address the corporate litigants' demands for cost efficiencies and for enhanced risk management and legal strategies. These product releases target corporate litigants who want to take core e-discovery activities in-house and those who are rationalizing their technologies and service providers

Following the joint announcement by Cisco, NetApp, and VMware on January 26, a number of my colleagues, including our senior Vice President for enterprise infrastructure, consumer, and telecom research (Vernon Turner), re-engaged in a what has become a wide ranging, and sometimes spirited, discussion about converged infrastructure. A number of product developments over the past couple years have been the catalyst for this ongoing discussion: