Enterprise search and information risk management (IRM) vendor Recommind has launched MindServer Categorization, which categorises and tags legacy and new data as it is created.
The company says this can help companies identify, use, manage and delete information more easily which in turn helps businesses to reduce storage, data centre and eDiscovery costs.
MindServer Categorization can automatically classify all information from document management and CRM systems, email archives, intranets, websites, and other systems to bring all information inline with data management policies.
Data can then be tagged with a number of categories, such as topics, geographic locations, document types, industries and language. The administrator can also define the rules and processes of the platform.
“The amount of information companies hold is growing and the problem is getting more acute, not less,” Recommind VP general counsel Craig Carpenter told CBR. “There is more information coming from Wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 apps and companies need to be proactive about categorising data.”
The increase in data has been matched by increasing regulatory guidelines, putting even more pressure on companies to make sure their data is managed correctly. Automating the categorisation and management of data is one way of reducing costs associated with eDiscovery.
The platform can mark documents for deletion if they are no longer needed for regulatory reasons, the company said. As well as tagging data that is already held within the company, MindServer Categorization can tag new data as it is created.
MindServer Categorization is scalable to hundreds of terabytes of data and millions of users. It also supports over 30 languages and over 400 document formats and can be integrated with any information source including document and records management systems, portals, databases or websites, Recommind said.
Carpenter added that Recommind sees a long-term future for the product beyond helping companies to comply with new regulations introduced during the economic crisis. “Short-term it’s about regulation and saving money. But beyond that it is about enabling companies to get ahead of risk management,” he said.
“Companies may want to hold of on spending money at the moment because IT budgets have been impacted by the economy,” Carpenter said. “But for regulatory reasons, this is very much a ‘have to have’ platform.”
One company using the new platform is Handelsblatt, a German media company. Martin Steinbach, head of archiving there, said: “We use MindServer Categorization to automatically categorise and structure both legacy and newly created content from myriad internal and external sources. It classifies large volumes of data even more accurately than human experts, in the process making such data easily accessible. It actually understands the meaning of a given document rather than simply matching keywords. And of course it’s much faster than human experts on their own.”
