CaseData Deploys DataCore IP SAN Software to Manage Storage for Its Vast Set of Legal Documents and Case Files

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- DataCore Software today announced that CaseData(TM) has deployed DataCore(TM) to address its storage needs, which are associated with managing the massive amounts of legal documents and case files that are mission-critical to its business. CaseData Corporation, headquartered near Salt Lake City, Utah, is a leading litigation technology company that provides comprehensive electronic and paper discovery services, online document review, searching, and production, and data recovery and forensics to nationally recognized law firms and Fortune 100 corporate legal departments. As a leader in the litigation technology industry, CaseData has built an outstanding reputation for its proprietary litigation technology support solutions and unparalleled client service to its large base of clients. CaseData provides discovery services for nearly half of the country's top law firms as well as high-profile companies like The Dow Chemical Company, ConocoPhillips, Toyota and Ford Motor Co. The company's storage needs are growing by leaps and bounds.

Specifically, DataCore Software was chosen since it can automatically and dynamically expand data storage to meet the needs of "capacity hungry" application servers at CaseData. Having looked at other vendors that allowed CaseData to simply "move" data around, these solutions did not allow system administrators to easily add and expand data storage to the existing pool. "DataCore Software partner Red Sky Solutions recommended DataCore and indeed DataCore went an extra step further than what we initially asked for -- allowing us to over-allocate or pre-allocate space, avoiding the problem of servers running out of disk space at critical times," said Randy Burgoyne, Information Technology Manager, CaseData. "DataCore enables our systems to go into automatic mode in terms of getting more storage from the pool. It makes it simple to manage a lot of storage to a lot of servers; it just allocates storage on-the-fly."

Recently, when CaseData was hitting the wall in terms of having enough space to handle its applications, partner Red Sky brought in an EMC AX100 RAID unit along with DataCore's software as a "proof of concept." After seeing how easy it was to use DataCore's SANmelody(TM) to automate provisioning and create huge virtual capacity disks -- adding considerable value to the EMC units, SANmelody was selected, installed and it is now central to the fundamental storage strategy at CaseData. "The demonstration proved that DataCore's SANmelody solved some very specific issues we were facing," added Burgoyne. "The fact that DataCore supports a wide variety of disk storage types and operating platforms was an added plus." The result for Casedata is that it can now add space very easily and just as importantly it can do so affordably using lower cost, open-system disk technology.

CaseData is a pioneer in providing advanced services for the legal community, the latest being e-Discovery. When CaseData adds a new customer, it appropriates all scanned images and electronic documents, along with email databases. The process of scanning and sorting through such vast amounts of data is very disk-space intensive. It is common for newly signed clients to add a 1 TB worth of data or more as they sign on, but CaseData typically winds up growing each new customer file quickly to as much as 3 TB, due to new customer requirements and because the company must maintain the data for multiple years for further discovery or recovery purposes. Because of the rapid pace of customer acquisition, The IT team at CaseData is challenged to lower the cost of storage and to rapidly allocate and repurpose its disk space.

Additionally, CaseData has what they call a "project" SAN solution that they have set up with 4 TB of data ready to meet new project needs. Burgoyne described how recently for a specific project the team needed to quickly allocate 2 TB of capacity to the SAN. This disk space was in turn allocated to their servers as needed. "This was astounding. We added two terabytes in minutes versus the hours it would have taken in the past," said Burgoyne. "It just blew our developers away." CaseData is planning to implement additional SANmelody servers and eventually place them all under the control of DataCore's SANsymphony(TM) solution. By adding SANsymphony, CaseData will then be able to virtualize their existing StorageTek arrays. While the current deployment is based on Fibre Channel, Burgoyne is very bullish about the fact that with DataCore everything deployed will also work over iSCSI. About CaseData

As the first national litigation technology service provider to develop an end-to-end solution for electronic and paper discovery, CaseData has developed a reputation for quality and dependability. Its world class electronic and paper discovery services include data collection, restoration, filtering, de- duplication, processing, coding, online document review, production, and hosting capabilities. With four patents pending, CaseData has invested heavily in producing the finest data quality processes in the market and an enterprise-class online document review tool called dataDeliver(TM). dataDeliver provides users with an online document repository, review and production tool that has been battle-tested by thousands of users in some of the most demanding cases over the past five years. Augmenting this powerful tool with extensive experience, CaseData is a trusted provider of litigation technology and discovery services to the nation's largest corporate legal departments and law firms. These high-profile clients, like The Dow Chemical Company, ConocoPhillips, Toyota, Ford Motor Company, and nearly half of the country's top law firms, rely on and trust the most advanced and best-of-class litigation technology services provided by CaseData. For more information, visit http://www.casedata.com. About DataCore Software

DataCore Software fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage. DataCore's disk server software easily adds capacity expansion and centralized storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, VMware, MacOS, and NetWare systems. DataCore is privately held with corporate headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, visit http://www.datacore.com. DataCore, the DataCore logo, SANsymphony, SANmelody, SANmaestro and Powered by DataCore are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.