kCura Puts the CAAT Into The Bag . . . Acquires Long-time Partner Content Analyst Company
We’ve seen another acquisition in the shifting eDiscovery market this week as kCura, the developer of Relativity, announced its acquisition of Content Analyst Company, the brains behind the CAAT analytics engine (kCura’s press release is here). The acquisition is not entirely surprising. kCura has been relying on the CAAT engine to power its analytics offering for eight years. According to kCura, use of its Relativity Analytics offering “has grown by nearly 1,500 percent” since 2011, with more than 70% of current kCura’s customers with licenses.
What does this acquisition mean for kCura, its customers, and Content Analyst Company customers?
This is more than just one vendor acquiring a partner to bring its tech in-house. The markets kCura competes in are changing. Customers want better predictive coding workflows, reporting, and visualization capabilities. The momentum around technology-assisted review (TAR) in eDiscovery is growing globally. In February 2016, the Pyrrho Investments Limited v. MWB Property Limited case gave the green light to predictive coding software in the UK, with the decision (PDF) citing acceptance in US and other jurisdictions. Interest and adoption of analytics for eDiscovery and other investigative use cases will only grow. Now that machine learning and technology-assisted review processes have been OK’d by the courts, many of the objections to using software for automated categorization, security classifications, and other analysis of textual data will dissipate.