Several years ago, I was the technical lead for a mission-critical application at a Fortune 100 insurance company. The application quoted and issued policies for the company’s largest commercial line of business, booking revenues upward of $28,000 per minute of scheduled uptime. One day, I received a request from the chief litigator to stop automatic deletion from the system. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Complying with this request—which, translated into IT terms, meant suspending the purge process—would have locked the database in 11 hours, crashing the application, crippling the company’s ability to sell a policy, and suspending 30 percent of the company’s revenue stream.
This was my first experience with e-discovery, and a classic example of the process disconnects I see at the companies for which I now consult. E-discovery, like litigation, can be a frenzy. Most companies are simply not set up with the streamlined channels of communication they need to respond effectively.
