Is eDiscovery Processing a Commodity? Posted By Andy Wilson on August 26, 2009
Lately I’ve heard quite a few people in the eDiscovery industry throw around the word commodity when discussing processing.
Which begs the question, is eDiscovery processing really a commodity?
If so, why so?
If not, why not?
I’ll start. First things first, my company (Logik), does just eDiscovery processing, so I have an obvious biased response, but I think it’s a logikal one. Just because the market is saturated with over 600 eDiscovery vendors, buyers of eDiscovery services may find it hard to see any real difference and thus focus on price alone. 
Which supports the commodity frame of mind. But, unlike grocery stores (that sell commodity goods), saturation in eDiscovery does not equal sameness.
As document formats continue to change and new eDiscovery services come about from processing (think: how do you collect and process data in the “Cloud”?), processing becomes more and more dynamic. This constant change in technology platforms alone makes processing a non-commodity service.
In order for eDiscovery processing to truly become a commodity I think it needs to become indistinguishable from any other vendors product and technology offering.
Has your experience been the same with every eDiscovery vendors technology and product? Why do we still fill out RFPs about our technology, product, and service? If everything was equal among vendors…we wouldn’t need to do these. Price alone would determine everything.
This is my opinion, what’s yours?
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