Switch

Enhancing eDiscovery with advanced technology

While delivering perfection in its clients’ digital experiences, Switch also needed to ensure that its own data was protected and accessible when it came to legal requests and investigations. Like any large enterprise, the company deals with a variety of litigation matters, which involve identifying, collecting, and producing electronically stored information for investigation—a process called eDiscovery. In recent years, Switch’s legal team searched for a way to more effectively manage the eDiscovery process in-house and on-site, but turning to thirdparty service providers was problematic.

Castor commented on the difficulty in finding a solution: “It was a significant lift. We saw where litigation was going. We preferred to do it in-house but back in 2016, we needed to bring on a partner to help us enhance the eDiscovery process. It proved unworkable. Then we hired another vendor, and that was even more of a headache.”

After considering multiple solutions, Switch engaged OpenText to transform its eDiscovery processes with a combination of technology and managed services. The OpenText Discovery Suite provides end-to-end eDiscovery software and services including OpenText™ Axcelerate, an early case assessment and review platform with advanced analytics, technology-assisted review (TAR) based on continuous machine learning, concept search, phrase analysis, automated redactions, and reporting. In addition, OpenText™ EnCase™ eDiscovery, the industry gold standard for data collection and preservation, was deployed across Switch endpoints and ECM systems to facilitate remote, forensic-grade data collections, and OpenText™ Insight Managed Review teams to help support document review needs.

Castor commented on the move to OpenText: “The OpenText Axcelerate platform has been elegant from the beginning. It was a smooth transition. We were able to reduce costs materially, almost immediately. We were able to get answers more quickly and efficiently. I wish we had done it sooner because it has allowed us to be much more responsive and avoid a lot of headaches in other litigation that have come up since we first needed an eDiscovery partner.”

Discovering speed, security, support, and savings

The flexibility of OpenText’s deployment options has delivered a hybrid solution that met Switch’s need for absolute security of data with some components on-premise and others in the cloud. Castor explained, “Our primary goal was to ensure that we had the data on-site. We want it to be in our data center, on our servers, because we don’t want there to be a risk of unauthorized proliferation or duplication of our data. We were comfortable with OpenText because they were a customer of Switch. We knew where the servers physically resided–in the world’s only Tier 5 Platinum Data Centers.”

The company has been supported along the way by the OpenText Discovery Professional Services team who offer industry expertise and eDiscovery project management to ensure Switch gains the most value from the OpenText solutions. “OpenText has been extremely collaborative in trying to figure things out. The team has been absolutely fantastic and very up-front about helping us do what we want to do and making sure that we’re doing it in a way that saves us money,” said Castor.

Saving money was also an important factor for Switch when it came to the solution pricing. Castor described the pricing issues with previous solutions: “A lot of providers will say, ‘Hey, it’s only X dollars per gigabyte,’ but then they come in on the back-end and charge you for de-duplication, and for threading, and for additional review. All of a sudden, what you thought was going to be a $1,000 charge becomes a $50,000 charge. That was very problematic and one of the pain points that we experienced with other vendors. OpenText gave us real transparency on pricing and helped us significantly lower the costs.”

Now using OpenText Axcelerate’s built-in data analytics and machine learning capabilities, Switch’s legal team has been able to quickly understand and intelligently organize data to maximize review efficiency and cost savings by minimizing the overall volume of documents needing legal review. Castor reported, “OpenText Axcelerate has helped sift through literally millions of documents. In one litigation event we’re working on right now using Axcelerate, there are over two million documents. Axcelerate has helped us categorize, streamline, de-duplicate, thread, and then prioritize the data in a way that would not otherwise be possible. OpenText has helped us deliver 50% faster than the other providers we used previously.”

Resilience and innovation in the face of insecurity

While the global pandemic caught most of the world by surprise, Switch is in the business of being prepared for the worst. Castor explained, “The company has been able to maintain continuity of service and mission-critical integrity. It’s what Switch was made for. We anticipated things like this would happen, planned for it, and thus it really hasn’t impacted us negatively. If anything, it’s actually made business better—we’ve been able to grow and continue to help accelerate digital transformation.”

Anticipating future needs, disrupting, and innovating will continue to drive Switch’s success. “We have a saying at Switch that we’re ‘motivated by invention, driven by perfection,” said Castor. It should come as no surprise that one of the company’s latest inventions is a fleet of autonomous security robots. Castor looks forward to OpenText’s continued support in this futuristic initiative: “The data that these autonomous vehicles will gather and need to process will be massive. We’ll need to rely on the services of experts like OpenText to help us process that data in the event of any litigation. With mountains and mountains of data, there’s just no way we could get through that without OpenText and without Axcelerate.”