Earlier this morning, Ipro Tech, LLC, a leading provider in eDiscovery, case management, and trial technology (and an Educational Partner of eDiscovery Today), announced the acquisition of NetGovern, a leader in Information governance, risk, and compliance software.

As the press release states: “Joining these two global companies and their technologies will provide the most innovative workflow in the legal industry, extending across the entire Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) from information governance, to in-place early data assessment, through eDiscovery and beyond. The companies complement each other perfectly by combining Ipro’s 30-year legacy of focus on law firms, government, and legal service providers with NetGovern’s deep expertise in corporate verticals, including healthcare, public sector, financial services, manufacturing, and transportation.

Evolving market dynamics and customer needs around continued enterprise data growth were the main drivers for this combined effort. As concerns grow regarding compliance, security, and risk management, the significance of economic consequences presents the business impact of properly managed data through the eDiscovery process, and the customer benefit of an integrated solution spanning the entire EDRM becomes even more compelling.

IDC estimates more than 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world in 2020, a figure it expects to continue growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% through 2024. This growth drives unprecedented challenges across enterprises with concerns ranging from compliance to security to risk management, and ultimately eDiscovery. The economic impact of managing these issues, breaches, and judgements is also spiraling.”

Expanding into the InfoGov, Risk and Compliance areas is something a lot of eDiscovery providers have been looking to do recently.  That’s understandable, because (as I’ve noted before), not all organizations have litigation extensive enough to require technology to support those workflows, but all organizations do have cybersecurity and data privacy concerns, so InfoGov, Risk and Compliance has become a HUGE area of focus in the industry.  Ipro’s acquisition announcement of NetGovern builds upon the strategic partnership the two companies announced back in January and gives Ipro a big boost in serving the needs of those markets and extending their reach throughout the entire EDRM life cycle.  Congrats to the Ipro team for making that happen.

Rob Robinson’s excellent Complex Discovery site always covers the publicly highlighted merger, acquisition, and investment (M&A+I) events in the eDiscovery ecosystem and he reviews it quarterly – his review of Q2 2020 is here.  Not surprisingly, M&A+I events were down drastically in 2020 (only 3 events) as compared to 2019 (13 events) for Q2.  However, considering that all 3 events in Q2 2020 were in June and we now have the Ipro-NetGovern acquisition in early July, perhaps activity will begin to pick up again as we continue trying to achieve some level of normalcy in this crazy year.  It looks like M&A+I activity isn’t completely dead, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, what do you think?  What do you think of Ipro’s acquisition of NetGovern?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.