In an age when electronic documents are becoming more important than paper ones, HP has reached an agreement with Clearwell Systems to resell its eDiscovery software, to give companies the tools to search for these documents. It is one of many software products becoming available on the market that helps companies comply with new legal rules that require firms to turn over electronic documents as well as paper ones in a legal proceeding. And it is challenging for companies to find documents that are part of an electronic database.

In December 2006, the new rules were issued as part of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that required document searches to include electronic ones in legal cases. And it has left many companies scrambling to find a simple remedy. The HP-Clearwell deal, announced Jan. 28, will give HP customers a highly scalable, comprehensive eDiscovery solution that covers information archiving, retention, advanced analysis and review. HP will offer the Clearwell solution with its HP Integrated Archive Platform.

Carolyn DiCenzo, Research VP at Gartner, said that eDiscovery issues are mentioned by nearly every client evaluating an email archiving solution. "Vendors with tools for reviewing and selecting appropriate records from a discovery search are winning over vendors with only basic search capabilities, even if those capabilities are not required in the first purchase," DiCenzo said.

For more on this deal:
- See the press release

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