Tag Archives: X1

November 19, 2024 · 11:47 AM

Industry Experts Address Information Governance Challenges in Microsoft 365

By John Patzakis

Successful information governance in a Microsoft 365 environment can be extremely challenging. Organizations require ways to operationalize their compliance processes, in order to effectively address their information governance use cases, such as PCI compliance, ROT, Data separation, and GDPR. However, Microsoft’s Purview eDiscovery platform is a very expensive add-on to M365 that does not scale to the data throughput requirements of a typical information governance project.

This is because M365 is a massive data ocean that is not purpose-built for compliance and eDiscovery, and so a new “compliance index” must be created with data carved out of the M365 ocean to initiate an eDiscovery or compliance case in Purview eDiscovery to ensure proper and complete content indexing. As a result of this disjointed two-step process, users are encountering significant problems with low throughput and defensibility. Many customers report to us that Microsoft Purview Premium’s documented inability  to handle anything other than small matters due to their 2GB per hour throughput limit. A matter involving 100 custodians at 10GB of M365 data would take several weeks to complete with Microsoft Purview Premium.

Last week X1 hosted a webinar with industry leaders Randy Kahn and Chas Meier to discuss information governance challenges in an M365 environment. Kahn outlined information governance principles and priorities in general and then emphasized how technical automation is essential to enforce and execute on any implemented information governance policies and procedures.

Kahn’s overview segued into Meier’s discussion and demonstration on how the X1 Enterprise Platform is the best solution available for managing M365 data sources as well as on-premises sources like laptops and file shares. Meier highlighted recent case studies involving large-scale projects where X1 was able to search and analyze terabytes of M365 information very accurately and in a fraction of the time required for other means, including Microsoft Purview.

Meier explained how the X1 Enterprise platform’s unique architecture allows it to index nearly ten times the daily volume compared to Purview or other competitive “connector” technologies. X1’s patented distributed micro-index-in-place architecture, combined with horizontal scaling, makes X1 the only solution capable of handling rapid indexing, identification, searching, and remediation of massive data sets in the terabytes across M365 sources, including modern attachments and inactive mailboxes. Additionally, X1 effectively addresses both cloud and on-premises data sources in a unified manner, including distributed endpoints, network file shares, and multiple M365 services like Mail, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint.

A copy of the webinar recording can be accessed HERE.

For companies navigating complex information governance and eDiscovery requirements, including those involving M365, the  X1 Enterprise Platform ensures compliance while protecting privacy. By implementing X1 Enterprise, organizations can not only reduce costs and save valuable time but also gain a strategic advantage in managing their information governance needs. We invite you to explore how X1 can transform your data management processes and help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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Filed under Best Practices, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, GDPR, Information Governance, m365, Preservation & Collection

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October 29, 2024 · 10:54 AM

Microsoft Copilot Explains Why X1 Search is Far Better than Windows Search

By Chas Meier

We’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI chat bot. So, we asked Copilot the following prompt:

“Is X1 Search better than the standard Windows Search?

Here is Copilot’s reply in full:

“Yes, X1 Search offers many advantages over standard Windows Search, especially if you’re dealing with large volumes of documents and emails. It integrates with multiple data sources, provides faster and more efficient searches, and offers advanced filtering and preview options that standard Windows Search lacks. For someone in your line of work, X1 Search could be a real game-changer.”

Intrigued, we explored further:

“What are the advantages of X1 search over standard Windows search?

Copilot:

“Great question! Here are some key advantages of X1 Search over standard Windows Search:

  1. Unified Search Across Multiple Data Sources: X1 Search can search across emails, documents, local files, cloud storage (like Google Drive, OneDrive, Box), and even archived emails. Windows Search, on the other hand, is limited to your local files and doesn’t integrate as seamlessly with cloud services.
  2. Speed and Efficiency: X1 Search uses advanced indexing and fast-as-you-type search capabilities, allowing you to find information almost instantly. Windows Search can be slower, especially when dealing with large volumes of data.
  3. Advanced Filtering and Preview Options: X1 Search offers powerful filtering options, keyword highlighting, and full fidelity previews of documents and emails without needing to open them fully. This makes it easier to quickly identify relevant information. Windows Search lacks these advanced features.
  4. Integration with Email and Collaboration Tools: X1 Search integrates deeply with email clients like Outlook and Microsoft Teams, allowing you to search through emails, attachments, chats, and more. Windows Search doesn’t offer this level of integration.
  5. Cloud Data Search: X1 Search can index and search data stored in cloud repositories like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box, which Windows Search doesn’t support.
  6. User Friendly Interface: X1 Search provides a simple, unified interface with over 50 refine columns, making it easy to navigate and find exactly what you need. Windows Search’s interface is more basic and less intuitive.

Does this help clarify the advantages for you?”

Yes, it does! Thank you, Microsoft Copilot! We could not have said it any better.

X1 Search is available for individual purchase on the X1 website and large volume, enterprise purchase by contacting X1 at sales@x1.com. To learn more about X1 Search visit  www.x1.com/solutions/x1-search.

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Filed under Best Practices, Business Productivity Search, Cloud Data, Corporations, Desktop Search, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, Enterprise Search, ESI, Google Workspace, Hybrid Search, Information Access, Information Management, m365, MS Teams, OneDrive, productivity, SharePoint, X1 Search 9

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October 17, 2024 · 1:59 PM

Dale vs. Deutsche Telekom AG Illustrates the Importance of Effective ECA to Attain Proportionality

By John Patzakis

In Dale v. Deutsche Telekom AG, No. 22 C 3189 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 4, 2024), a class-action antitrust litigation stemming from the 2020 merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the Court denied the plaintiffs’ motion to expand a proposed custodian list from fifty custodians to sixty, including three in-house attorneys. The court stated that adding the additional custodians would be “out of proportion to the needs of the case.”

Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole began the order by quoting Vakharia v. Swedish Covenant Hosp.: “The discovery rules are not a ticket to an unlimited, never-ending exploration of every conceivable matter that captures an attorney’s interest. Parties are entitled to a reasonable opportunity to investigate the facts—and no more.” He also added: “The inescapable reality is that discovery has come to dominate civil litigation…Proportionality, like other concepts, it is not self-defining; it requires a common sense and experiential assessment…In other words, all are agreed that discovery has gotten out of hand over the years and needs to be reigned in.”

The Court’s opinion detailed the ill-fated negotiations between the parties, with a key take-away being the lack of visibility Deutsche Telekom’s in-house counsel had into their own custodians’ data, which stymied their ability to effectively eliminate guess work and limit the number of custodians. This case illustrates that while there is a keen awareness of proportionality in the legal community, realizing the benefits requires the ability to operationalize workflows as far upstream in the eDiscovery process as possible. For instance, when you are engaging in data over-collection, which in turn incurs extensive labor and processing costs, the ship has largely sailed before you are able to perform early case assessments and data relevancy analysis, as much of the discovery costs have already been incurred at that point. The case law and the Federal Rules provide that the duty to preserve only applies to potentially relevant information, but unless you have the right operational processes in place, you are losing out on the ability to attain the benefits of proportionality.

However, traditional eDiscovery services typically involve manual collection, followed by manual on-premises hardware-based processing, and finally manual upload to review. These inefficiencies extend projects by often weeks while dramatically increasing cost and risk with purposeful data over-collection and dozens of manual data handoffs. The good news is that solutions and processes addressing the first half of the EDRM involving collection and processing are now far more automated.

To accomplish the goals of gaining early visibility into your data to foster more intelligent early case assessment, informed discovery negotiations with opposing counsel, and targeted, proportional data collection, corporate legal department should utilize index and search in-place technology. Indexing and search in-place in this context means that a software-based indexing technology (as opposed to an expensive and cumbersome stand-alone hardware appliance) is deployed directly onto the laptop, file server or in the cloud for Microsoft 365 data sources. This indexing occurs without a bulk data transfer of the data. Once indexed, you can search through terabytes of information in seconds, with complex Boolean operators, metadata filters and regular expression searches. Legal teams can iterate and repeat their searches without limitation, which is critical for large data sets.

These capabilities supporting targeted and proportional collection of loose files, emails, and large network file shares and M365 are uniquely provided in the X1 Enterprise Platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Case Law, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, m365, Preservation & Collection, proportionality

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July 23, 2024 · 10:55 AM

Enterprise Search is Dead. A New Approach is Here.

By John Patzakis

In today’s fast-paced digital world, employee productivity hinges on robust enterprise search capabilities that allow quick and easy retrieval of an organization’s documents, emails, and other unstructured data. Despite the critical nature of this capability, many organizations have historically invested considerable time, money, and effort into now-obsolete tools built on flawed enterprise search architectures. These legacy tools, often ineffective, have become completely untenable in the era of remote work and the widespread use of platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).

The Limitations of Traditional Enterprise Search
Traditional enterprise search architectures rely on gathering all relevant data through crawling and mass migration tools, centralizing it into a single repository. This approach, though prevalent for years, has significant drawbacks:

  1. Security and Governance Risks: Duplicating and then centralizing sensitive data in a single repository creates a prime target for cyberattacks, runs afoul with data protection regulations, and is completely contrary to information governance principles.
  2. Scalability Issues: The sheer volume of data in modern enterprises, often amounting to hundreds of terabytes, makes central repositories impossible.
  3. Incompatibility with Modern Platforms: Legacy systems are ill-suited to integrate with platforms like Microsoft 365, which are now dominant in enterprise environments.

Duplicating vast amounts of sensitive data and centralizing it in an external repository is not only risky but also extremely impractical. Despite this, some vendors continue to push these outdated solutions, ignoring the evolving needs of modern enterprises.

X1 Search: A Revolutionary Approach
X1 Search addresses these challenges with a game-changing approach that offers a distributed, individualized enterprise search workflow. This innovative architecture brings several key benefits:

  1. Distributed Index and Search In-Place Technology: X1’s proprietary and patented technology enables scalable search capabilities while maintaining robust security. Each employee has an individual search index aligned with their permissions, ensuring they only access data they are authorized to see.
  2. No Mass Data Duplication: Unlike traditional systems, X1 does not require the mass duplication of data. Users interact with original documents and emails, facilitating actions like opening, replying to, or forwarding them directly from the search interface.

Enhancing Productivity with Unified Search
The latest iteration of X1 Search transcends its desktop origins, offering the ability to instantly search across various platforms, including Microsoft email, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, as well as local files and emails, all within a single unified interface. This powerful capability can significantly boost productivity, saving users hours each day by streamlining access to critical information. Additionally, X1 Search now supports Google Drive and Gmail, broadening its utility across different cloud ecosystems.

User Experience and Endorsements
A critical aspect of X1 Search’s success is its excellent user experience. With over 100,000 users, the solution has garnered widespread acclaim. Max Underwood, a long-time user from a large defense contracting firm, states, “X1 Search is my go-to, must-have search application on my desktop. Nothing even comes close to matching X1 Search’s speed and accuracy in finding what I am looking for exactly when I need it.”

Conclusion
As organizations navigate the complexities of remote work and vast amounts of unstructured data, traditional enterprise search solutions fall short. X1 Search’s innovative approach, leveraging distributed index and search in-place technology, offers a secure, scalable, and user-friendly alternative. By eliminating the need for mass data duplication and providing a unified search experience across multiple platforms, X1 Search is setting a new standard for enterprise search capabilities, empowering employees and enhancing productivity in the modern digital workplace.

X1 Search is available for individual purchase on the X1 website and large volume, enterprise purchase by contacting X1 at sales@x1.com. To learn more about X1 Search visit www.x1.com/products/x1-search.

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Filed under Best Practices, Business Productivity Search, Cloud Data, Corporations, Desktop Search, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, Enterprise Search, ESI, Google Workspace, Hybrid Search, m365, MS Teams, X1 Search 9

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June 25, 2024 · 11:28 AM

X1 Achieves Unmatched Throughput and Results in Several Recent M365 eDiscovery and Information Governance Engagements

By John Patzakis and Chas Meier

As discussed previously on this blog, X1 and our active enterprise customers believe X1 Enterprise Collect is the best solution available to address M365 data sources as well as on-premises sources such as laptops and file shares. In recent weeks, our customers and partners have executed several projects on a massive scale and have captured and documented X1’s performance metrics.

No other solution in the industry can index data across the enterprise as fast or as scalable as the X1 Enterprise platform, including Microsoft Purview Premium. When compared to Microsoft Purview, with its built-in architectural constraints and throttling limitations, X1 can index nearly eight times the daily volume of Purview or any other competitive “connector” technology can achieve in the market. X1’s distributed index-in-place methodology, combined with horizontal scaling of our index hosts, make X1 the only solution truly capable of handling the rapid indexing, identification, searching and collecting/remediation of mass data sets in the TB’s or PB’s across the modern enterprise. X1 effectively addresses cloud and on-premises data sources in a unified manner, including distributed endpoints, network file shares, M365 data sources including Mail, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint, as well as other cloud data sources.

In several recent large-scale eDiscovery and information governance projects, X1 Enterprise Collect, on average, was able to collect and index M365 data (MS Mail [including archived mail and modern attachments] Teams, One Drive and SharePoint) at a rate of approximately 350 GB per day. This is nearly 8 times faster than Microsoft Purview, with its documented throughput limitations at 2GB per hour. X1 can achieve even faster throughput by scaling out virtual cloud computing resources.

Daily indexing volumes for endpoints and on-premises file shares vary due to the performance characteristics of each machine, but X1 indexes and searches endpoints in parallel yielding extremely high aggregate daily indexing and collection throughput.

Detailed documentation on these metrics and a further briefing on these engagements can be provided upon request.

X1 achieves such scalability through a decentralized approach that does not rely on the M365 or Purview search Index, which has known issues with the number of file types supported, consistency of search results, accuracy, and throughput. X1’s approach enables a very scalable, accurate, defensible, and robust indexing and data collection at unmatched speeds.

In addition to greatly reducing risk, X1’s capabilities also enable massive cost savings. X1 Enterprise Collect significantly streamlines the eDiscovery workflow by bringing targeted collection results directly into the review platform, thereby eliminating over collection, over processing, and over importing just to cull. X1 will populate ESI (Electronically Stored Information) straight into Relativity from an X1 collection without multiple hand offs, extensive project management and inefficient data processing.

The ability to collect data directly and transparently from custodian laptops, desktops, M365 and other cloud sources into a RelativityOne/Relativity workspace is a game-changer that enables legal and compliance teams to begin review in hours rather than weeks. As facts become known and collection focus changes, X1 allows teams to pivot and respond in hours. With the ability to efficiently take multiple bites of the apple, X1 enables teams to start fast and stay agile.

For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, MS Teams, OneDrive, Preservation & Collection, SharePoint

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