One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet the senior people at the major companies in the eDiscovery markets. Quite apart from their influential position in the eDiscovery industry on which I comment, they are people I actually like to spend time with.

One I had missed until recently was Andy Jimenez, CEO of FRONTEO. I sat opposite him at a dinner organised by kCura at Legaltech and heard him speak on a kCura panel the following day, and regretted that I had not had the opportunity to meet him earlier. Wit and merriment are not necessarily the defining characteristics of this industry’s leaders, and Andy has them both, on top of a deep understanding of what clients want in the industry.

I’m sure there is no connection, but just as I have met him, Andy Jimenez is leaving FRONTEO. The positive aspect of this, so far as I’m concerned, is that his successor is Craig Carpenter whom I have known for ever, originally when he was CMO at Recommind (now OpenText).

Craig Carpenter was personally responsible for much of Recommind’s success in promoting its expertise at predictive coding. This was a tough sell in those days when it was new, and Craig Carpenter tackled the promotional task with vigour. He was also the first person I heard (at a conference in Hong Kong) predict that analytics had a big future role to play in information governance, something which reached fruition when, a long time later, OpenText added Recommind to its stable with precisely that intention in mind.

This is a good appointment from FRONTEO’s point of view. Its growth and penetration in the last 12 months has been extremely impressive and Craig Carpenter is the right man to move it on to the next phase in its development. I look forward to working with him again.

There is a press release here about Craig Carpenter’s appointment and about FRONTEO’s plans for the establishment of an Office of the CEO.

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