This is my third start at writing about the launch of the Nuix information governance platform Luminate. The results of the first two attempts may turn up in due course in an essay on good marketing or on the importance of information governance or, perhaps, both at once. The role of this site is to give short factual accounts of things of interest in eDiscovery / eDisclosure – a subject, verb, object  approach instead of elegantly-turned sentences conveying thoughtful commentary.

So:

Nuix launched Luminate

Perhaps we can add a little detail:

Nuix launched its information governance platform Luminate at LegalTech 2013

It warrants a bit more than that:

Information management software company Nuix launched its new information governance product Luminate at a well-judged and packed event at LegalTech 2013

Last go:

At an event which showed that its marketing skills match its software development skills, information management software company Nuix launched its interesting new information governance application Luminate at an enjoyable and interesting event at LegalTech 2013

That’s more like it.  In less than 13 years, Nuix has moved from being a small forensic software company through eDiscovery software provider and on into the deeper waters of information governance. They have achieved this, not merely by producing solutions which companies want to buy, but by taking a strong lead in promoting thought about the subject and in bringing together those who can articulate useful contributions to the discussions.

The Nuix Luminate web page is here, with a brief description of the four stages of information governance which it helps manage – to understand and prioritise, to analyse and review, to act and enable and to maintain and leverage. The objectives (and Nuix is good at retaining a focus on client objectives) is are to reduce costs, to mitigate risk, to maintain compliance and, not least, to extract value from the data which survives the deletion of irrelevant material.  There are links from this page to more detailed sections about archive search, defensible deletion and intelligent migration.

So much for the product, what about the event? The centrepiece was an engaging talk by Barclay Blair of ViaLumina. Barclay took as a parallel the governance of New York City at the beginning of the Twentieth century. The city, he said, had no budget; this is not the same as having no money – there was no formal means of identifying actual spend, still less prospective expense, or of raising funds against preallocated targets. Things got done, but resources – and opportunities – were wasted.  Proper planning only became possible once data had been collated and turned into management information, including the prediction of future costs. You can deduce for yourself how this parallel works through into companies which have no means of using the data which accumulates with every project and with every day.

Companies may well be able to identify the direct and tangible costs of maintaining servers and software and of employing people to look after them; they might even (though few seem to do this) keep track of the costs associated with giving eDiscovery from the growing volumes of data. What they can never track are the lost opportunities derived from the inability to extract value from such of their data as is actually useful.

Barclay Blair has written a White Paper for Nuix covering  this ground and called The Total Cost of Owning Unstructured Information which introduces new ideas such as Full Cost Accounting for Information, the Information Calorie, and Information Cap and Trade which are designed to help organisations think about and manage their unstructured information.

Nuix has also produced a paper called Reducing the Costs of eDiscovery from Collection to Court which focuses as much on information advantages in litigation as on the usual subject of the avoidance of risk.

 The event itself had as trailers the clever Beans video and Nuix’s inspired move in recruiting Deborah Baron as Chief Marketing Officer. Luminate was not the only new product launched in that week – Nuix 4.2 is out as well. That is an awful lot to bite off in one week. How do you pitch the launch?

It is easy enough to buy the outward trappings of a big launch – take some big space at the top of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, serve good food and drink, lay on a first-rate speaker, invite the right people and do some clever things with the lighting. Nuix did all that, but without excess, and their secret – and this is extremely difficult  when a company is growing this fast – is to pull off such a big event whilst making your invited guests feel part of the Nuix “family”. That Nuix managed this, is a tribute to Marketing Director Carolyn Betts and her team. There are some photographs here which include one of me with Nuix’s US CEO Mark Chardack.

I am in danger of lapsing back into my riff on the subject of successful marketing which I promised to cover separately. Nuix’s primary secret, obviously, lies in its technology and in its marketing. It lies also, however, in a comment made to me by a Nuix employee during the evening: “I’m really proud to work for this company”, he said. If CEO Eddie Sheehy can maintain that amongst his staff as the company grows yet further, Nuix will continue to succeed.