E-Discovery, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems and Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

Introduction

Recent US case law has positively re-emphasised the need for increased transparency and audit when conducting searches of electronically stored information (“ESI”) for the purposes of discovery.

Today’s enterprise has power over, custody or control of ESI in many formats. Adding to complexity, the same ESI is often stored as duplicate, or synchronised, to a number of distributed sources and locations.

The majority of ESI is typically classified as unstructured data. Increasingly, such ESI is managed by an Enterprise Content Management (“ECM”) system.

Defining ECM

The Association for Information and Image Management (“AIIM”) provides the following definition of ECM:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the technologies used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

See also: Wikipedia.

E-Discovery Searches and ECM Systems

ECM systems have many roles, yet are arguably entrenched within the Information Management stage of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (“EDRM”).

Today’s enterprise operates multiple ECM systems within their technology infrastructure.

Ethan Gur-esh of Microsoft recently noted:

Having multiple ECM systems introduces integration challenges: Enterprises (rightly) want their users to be able to access and manage all content in the way that best meets their needs, regardless of which system it actually live in. For example, …organizations want their electronic discovery applications be able to find content and suspend its disposition across any ECM system.  But in practice integrating these ECM systems is a challenge because each has its own interfaces.

Searching of ESI within an ECM system is typically undertaken by:

1. Using the search functionality of the ECM system software, to search for, and extract potentially relevant ESI for further processing, analysis and review; or
2. Using specific e-discovery software, tailored for an enterprise environment, which in-turn uses a connector, to access, index and search for potentially relevant ESI which may then be processed, analysed, reviewed and produced in an efficient manner.

Connectors have contributed significantly to searches over (multiple) ECM systems for the specific purpose of e-discovery. However, the level of transparency and audit arguably varies on the connector and search software in-use within the specific technology infrastructure.

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

On 10 September 2008, Microsoft announced:

EMC Corp., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a jointly developed specification that uses Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to interoperate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories by different vendors. The companies intend to submit the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for advancement through its rigorous standards development process.

In Summary

As reflected by industry analysts, the specification is still in its infancy.  Paul Ferris of Ferris Research has also noted a number of presently missing features of importance to e-discovery search. Notwithstanding, a common set of standards to reduce the complexity in not only managing, but searching ESI, stored within multiple ECM systems, can only be observed as positive for all stakeholders.