HP today announced several important updates to its information governance portfolio - spanning its eDiscovery, ECM, and Information Archiving product lines - to help customers proactively prepare for litigation, improve the productivity of their legal professionals, better manage risk and respond to evolving requirements for how enterprise information is governed. 

Together, these enhancements provide customers with a greater ability to leverage the cloud. HP eDiscovery OnDemand has been extended with increased load file ingestion capability, more-granular security and simplified user interfaces to help customers take better advantage of this cloud-based, do-it-yourself offering. In addition, a new UK data center is now available to expand ECM cloud offerings, including HP WorkSite and HP LinkSite, to the European market. Additional enhancements to the portfolio include greater cross-product integration and simplified implementation, administration, and usability. 

"With HP's information governance solutions, we've been able to centrally manage, categorize and retain information for legal and compliance purposes," said Bernard Shek, senior director, Litigation, SanDisk.  "This has allowed SanDisk to manage its data retention and eDiscovery responsibilities in a more cost effective manner than ever before."    

Developed with the HP HAVEn big data analytics platform as its core, HP's information governance portfolio allows customers to understand, analyze and organize vast amounts of enterprise information. This platform also enables the products within the portfolio to work more effectively together and deliver greater aggregate value. For instance, HP Universal Search now can access and analyze data archived in HP Consolidated Archive (HPCA), for improved productivity and knowledge management.  HPCA also now features enhanced integration with HP WorkSite - WorkSite now reconciles email stubs from HPCA to complete the electronic file, which enhances search and compliance.

Other key product improvements include:

• HP Consolidated Archive: Improved user experience and support of mobile devices to better support today's mobile workforce.
• HP Digital Safe: Enhanced eDiscovery support and workflow, in addition to improved retention management for better information governance.
• HP WorkSite:  New support of Office 365 for advanced desktop users, plus iOS mobility enhancements, security improvements and support for additional MDM (Mobile Device Management) vendors.
• HP LinkSite: Enriched workflow that automatically prompts users to email secure links instead of large attachments, by leveraging HP's secure cloud file-sharing service, to streamline collaboration and reduce mailbox size.
• HP Universal Search: Augmented search, performance and preview functionality to help users pinpoint highly complex search terms within compound content like emails with zip file attachments.

 Increasing Attention to Information Governance

The announcement of HP's continued execution on its information governance strategy coincides with the countdown to the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which are widely expected to be approved and become effective as scheduled in December 2015.  These amendments, particularly those that focus on data preservation - Rule 37(e) - are likely to impact how organizations doing business in the US view the importance of addressing information governance.  

"Today's evolving litigation landscape is forcing organizations to look for a more complete, integrated information governance solution that allows them to solve a wider set of information compliance problems," said David Jones, general manager, Big Data Solutions, HP Software.  "The continued integration of, and enhancements to, HP's portfolio will deliver that complete solution, which improves information lifecycle management, streamlines legal workflow and helps our customers address all of these emerging trends."