I was one of around 350 guests at kCura’s Relativity Spring Launch in London last week. Before saying anything about the event or the product, I should note that an assembly of this size with a sole focus on eDiscovery / eDisclosure (never mind that it was about a single product) would have been inconceivable even three years ago.

kCura avoided glitz and over-the-top frills, perfectly pitching the production values for a UK audience: the London-themed backdrop signified restrained quality; when it was time to start, kCura’s Steve Couling ambled onto the stage without fanfare and welcomed us with some brief facts about kCura’s EMEA region which is his responsibility.

Then came CEO Andrew Sieja, who has the knack of conveying that while this is now a big company with a worldwide footprint, the audience is still part of a family, and that success is a shared ambition. Software engineers and people from support and training all matter, and the large (and growing) body of resellers, consultants and users are all participants.

Andrew Sieja gave us the base facts of Relativity’s growth – 119,000+ active users, more than 140 channel partners, 310 law firms, 30 corporations and 20 government agencies.

He then moved on to tell us about the changes in Relativity 9.2, notably Cluster Visualisation; a new concept called the Data Grid (a NoSQL option which reduces dependence on SQL databases and infrastructure); an audit UI; improvements to the overall user experience (he showed us before and after pictures to emphasise the changes which have been made in this); and substantial improvements to Relativity Binders.

You can read more about Relativity 9.2 here.

This all looks good, and was welcomed by an audience whose role is to sell or use Relativity. For me, however, the most significant conclusion from the evening was that there many more users of eDiscovery / eDisclosure software out there than one might guess at, and that what was until recently a niche activity is something for which a big audience will give up an evening to hear about a product release and to meet up with others.

In preparation for the evening, I gave an interview to kCura’s Paul Gordon about eDisclosure developments in the UK. That interview has now appeared as an article called Proportionality, Paranoia, and the U.K.’s Biggest eDisclosure Challenges.

The Spring Launch goes on to New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.