Sunday, November 8, 2009

IT Can Better Meet Legal Data Obligations with e-Discovery Workflow from PSS Systems

New version of Atlas Compliance Automation more closely ties legal and IT, extends automation of enterprise-wide information governance

Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) November 9, 2009 -- PSS Systems, the leading provider of information governance solutions, today announced the availability of Atlas Compliance Automation 2.0 (ACA 2.0). ACA 2.0 is a development platform that allows PSS clients and partners to integrate the Atlas Suite with their information repositories to provide a more complete e-discovery workflow within their organization. With today's release, PSS makes it easy to integrate Atlas legal holds, collection instructions and retention management requirements with information repositories within the organization. Corporate attorneys and compliance staff using Atlas Suite can now federate legal hold parameters and collection instructions directly from their desktops to repositories and archiving systems. This integration dramatically reduces the risk of under-preserving data with legal obligations and over-preserving data that is no longer on hold.

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of legal obligations for data, largely driven by expanded e-discovery requirements and revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Confusion about these legal obligations and a lack of communication between legal and IT have increased the risk that an organization will dispose of critical legal data. For this reason, many companies have adopted a "save everything" approach to data - with huge cost implications. Excess data has not only driven up internal and external discovery costs in most organizations by 20% per year, but has also pushed storage and data management costs to nearly 40% of IT budgets.

PSS Atlas Suite eliminates unnecessary legal risk and reduces discovery and data management costs. PSS Atlas Suite includes products that deliver intelligent legal holds, value-based retention and discovery cost management to enable companies to meet information governance obligations and defensibly dispose of data that has no business value. PSS allows companies to manage an intelligent process for legal holds with far less effort than alternative approaches to preserving and collecting data. Using PSS, companies can also accelerate value-based retention management by quickly launching a global program that leverages existing schedules and staff. In addition, PSS customers can predict and control discovery costs by establishing transparency and control across the portfolio.

"When legal and IT work as a team, you can significantly reduce legal risk and discovery and data management costs," said Deidre Paknad, CEO of PSS Systems. "By providing organizations with a complete e-discovery workflow, PSS is helping legal and IT work together to ensure that critical legal information is retained while unnecessary data is discarded. We are also providing an infrastructure for federated information governance that works within companies' existing data environments."

Companies that have adopted the PSS approach are seeing dramatic cost reductions. One Fortune 200 financial services customer used PSS to save 20% year over year on litigation costs and drive litigation costs to a five-year low. Another Fortune 30 financial services customer was able to reduce data volume growth from 50% to 10% annually by using PSS. Still another top financial services company that was keeping data for 12 years used PSS to reduce their retention period by 75% and achieve $50 million in cost savings from defensible data disposal.

PSS customers are also lowering data management costs and risk through better connectivity. With connectors and its SDK, PSS can tie into any user content - from file shares, SharePoint and Documentum to backup tapes, PeopleSoft, Excel spreadsheets and more. New connectors are now also available that allow the Atlas Suite to automatically propagate governance instructions to e-discovery products from IBM, Symantec, Mimosa and StoredIQ. Developers can use PSS connector templates to quickly create their own custom connectors. With better connectivity, PSS customers can reduce the cost of manual communication and tracking of data while reducing the risk of content being missed in the process.

For more information on Atlas Compliance Automation visit www.pss-systems.com/aca.

About PSS Systems

PSS Systems helps companies eliminate unnecessary legal risk and discovery and data management costs. Its Atlas suite is the recognized leader in legal information governance, with customers like Abbott, Amgen, BASF, BP, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, First Data, GE, Merrill Lynch, Pfizer, Travelers and Williams. PSS is the innovator that started the legal holds market in 2004 and has the largest concentration of customers and domain experts anywhere. PSS is a trusted business partner to its customers, offering expert insight, best-in-class software, and continuous innovation to address emerging challenges. PSS founded and sponsors the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Council (CGOC) as a part of its commitment to advancing corporate retention and preservation practices. The company is based in Mountain View, California. For more information, visit www.pss-systems.com.

Media Contact:

Leyl Master Black
Sparkpr
leyl (at) corp.sparkpr (dot) com

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[Via Legal / Law]

Posted by prolink at 11:45 PM

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