Storage management and analytics

Learn storage techniques for managing unstructured data use

Rearchitect storage to maximize unstructured data use at the global scale for larger data sets coming from big data analytics and other applications. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

Ctera Networks CEO: enterprise subscriptions spiking

Ctera Networks claimed subscription revenue for its enterprise file services platform more than doubled in fiscal 2017, pushing the company to record results for the year. As a private company, ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Is demand for data storage or supply driving increased storage?

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Embrace IT digital transformation and the new tech landscape

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Is demand for data storage or supply driving increased storage?

Figuring out whether we're storing more data than ever because we're producing more data or because constantly evolving storage technology lets us store more of it isn't easy. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

Embrace IT digital transformation and the new tech landscape

The digital economy is increasingly defining business, and IT's relationship to business and the bottom line is becoming tied together more tightly. Continue Reading

By

• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

Hybrid Reduxio storage shifts gears to midrange enterprises

Reduxio's converged primary and secondary storage integrates native tools for data management and protection. Can the hybrid flash vendor turn a profit and pull off an IPO? Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Violin Systems and StorOne lead way to shared storage

Two companies head toward a future of shared enterprise storage resources, moving away from siloed software-defined and hyper-converged approaches. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Violin Systems and StorOne lead way to shared storage

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The best enterprise storage systems and services of 2017

For 16 years, Storage magazine and SearchStorage have recognized the best enterprise storage systems with our annual Products of the Year awards. For this year's competition, vendors submitted new and upgraded products from the past year across five categories, including backup and disaster recovery hardware, backup and DR software and services, software-defined storage, storage arrays and storage management tools. Judges for the competition included consultants, users, analysts and Storage magazine and SearchStorage writers and editors. They assessed products based on innovation, performance, ease of integration, ease of use and manageability, functionality and value. Of the 47 finalists, only the best enterprise storage systems won coveted gold, silver or bronze to become one of our 2017 Products of the Year.

Time is of the essence. If you haven't started getting ready for the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is time to start. GDPR goes into effect May 25, 2018, and is designed to protect EU residents' privacy and personal data by specifying rules, processes and technologies organizations must follow or use. Noncompliance -- both major and minor -- could lead to significant financial penalties that climb high enough to put some companies out of business. Compliance isn't optional; it's a must. While it won't be easy -- in some cases, particularly so -- to meet the GDPR's 87 pages and 99 articles of specifications and regulations, it isn't impossible. Read on to find out everything you need know about GDPR, see what it means for your organization and, most importantly, learn how to make sure you're not on the short end of the GDPR compliance stick.

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Future of data storage technology: Transformational trends for 2018

Risk-averse enterprises finally accepted the cloud in 2017, and we didn't even notice. Expect the same for these data storage technology trends in the new year. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

IT infrastructure automation boosts digital initiatives

Embracing automation through concepts like composable infrastructure cuts back on the use of manual IT tasks, which inhibit the success of digital business. Continue Reading

By

• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

NVMe flash storage doesn't mean tape and disk are dying

The advent of NVMe, software-defined storage and other newer storage technologies doesn't mean we'll be looking at all-silicon-based storage any time soon. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

SDS, HCI and CDP are key to dream enterprise storage system

Easy to implement and manage may be the buzzwords of the day for enterprise data storage systems, but too often daily experiences of IT professionals belie that rosy scenario. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Future of data storage technology: Transformational trends for 2018

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SDS, HCI and CDP are key to dream enterprise storage system

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NVMe flash storage doesn't mean tape and disk are dying

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IT infrastructure automation boosts digital initiatives

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big data storage

Big data storage is a compute-and-storage architecture that collects and manages large data sets and enables real-time data analytics. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

MTTR (mean time to repair)

MTTR (mean time to repair) is the average time required to fix a failed component or device and return it to production status. Continue Reading

By

• Erin Sullivan, Senior Site Editor
• Kim Hefner, Managing Editor

The hottest data storage technology trends for 2018

For the past 15 years, Storage magazine has identified the hottest data storage technology trends you'll want to follow in the coming year. All of our selections may be "newish" tech, but they're also tried and true, having demonstrated their effectiveness and worth in the data center. You won't find anything bleeding edge on our list -- only proven and widely available technologies made the cut. Honorees for the hottest data storage technology trends of 2018 cover a wide spectrum of storage tech, from predictive analytics to ransomware protection to converged secondary storage, multi-cloud and nonvolatile memory express over fabrics.

Although we do our best to predict the hottest data storage technology trends, sometimes our crystal ball isn't as clear as we would like. Once again, we've included a report card on how last year's picks panned out. And, as a bonus, we've provided a list of storage trends that aren't quite ready for prime time and didn't make our 2018 hot tech list. There's always 2019 for those technologies!

Not all backups are created equal or even follow the traditional model of only copying files that have changed since the last backup to a storage device on a media server. Take the concept of backup-less backups, commonly called flat backups. Here, storage-level snapshots created on a server or filer are backed up and replicated to another server filer. This is different from a typical backup in a couple ways: There's no media server, and the protected copy is just that, a copy -- in the same format as the original data. Find out more about backup-less backup, the vendors that offer it and how you can best make use of the technology for your organization.

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Trends in data storage 2018: Five hot techs to watch

Our hot data storage technology trends for 2018 include predictive storage analytics, ransomware protection, converged secondary storage, multi-cloud and NVMe over Fabrics. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

Peering into the future of enterprise storage for 2018

Rich Castagna takes a crack at the annual rite of prognostication with a bold look -- unfettered by truth, reality and sanity -- at data storage trends in the coming year. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Trends in data storage 2018: Five hot techs to watch

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Peering into the future of enterprise storage for 2018

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data management platform (DMP)

A data management platform (DMP), also referred to as a unified data management platform (UDMP), is a centralized system for collecting and analyzing large sets of data originating from disparate sources. Continue Reading

By

• Stacey Peterson, Senior Managing Editor

Features disaster recovery-as-a-service providers must offer

A cost-effective disaster recovery as a service lets organizations of all sizes implement a dependable disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery-as-a-service providers replicate or back up customer data to cloud data centers and then -- should disaster strike -- host and run applications remotely. There's a lot of room for disaster recovery-as-a-service providers to develop features specific to their DRaaS products, which can make sorting through those offerings daunting. Learn about the four key capabilities to look for when comparing DRaaS vendors to ensure the one you choose can handle the full range of potential disasters.

Data that goes into cold storage is often kept for compliance and, increasingly, for big data analysis. Such data is infrequently or never accessed. Typically cheaper and lower performing than primary or secondary storage, cold storage systems are designed for storing such data. Enterprises may need to make this data warm or hot at a moment's notice, though, complicating cold storage design and increasing costs. Initially based on automated tape libraries and optical jukeboxes, cold storage systems have evolved to encompass Linear Tape File System and object storage as the amount of unstructured data has grown in recent years. Software for managing unstructured data has changed the cold data landscape as well.

Employees often access and synchronize corporate data from a variety of consumer-grade sync-and-share services, putting the organization at risk. Enterprise-grade file sync-and-share -- available via the cloud, on premises or in hybrid modes -- includes enhancements to ensure security and compliance. Such features vary among vendors, but there are certain ones you should always look for to maintain data integrity and security.

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Cisco telemetry data gets streamed from MDS 9700 32G modules

Cisco SAN telemetry sensors capture insight on network fabrics to aid capacity and infrastructure management. The FC feature provides real-time instrumentation analytics. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Multicloud storage mitigates risk of public cloud lock-in

Multicloud storage strategy allows for the shifting of data across public clouds so you can avoid lock-in to a single provider, reduce cost and improve workload efficiency. Continue Reading

By

• Jeff Kato and Jeff Byrne

NetApp CEO Kurian: I see the power of data change lives

LAS VEGAS - In a week full of raw emotion, NetApp CEO George Kurian shared a personal story on the power of data to change lives. Kurian was speaking to attendees at NetApp Insight conference here ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Secondary data storage: A massively scalable transformation

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Open source technology promises to alter enterprise storage

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Buying NAS: Do you want performance and scalability?

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A long hot summer for the enterprise storage market

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The power and benefits of encouraging IT disruption

IT can't remain a reactive cost center and cheerful help desk, but must become a competitive, cutthroat service provider and powerful champion of emerging disruptive technology. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

The power and benefits of encouraging IT disruption

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Primary Data DataSphere upgrade follows funding grab

Primary Data has beefed up storage analytics and cloud migration in its DataSphere virtualization platform. Now the startup is ready to dip into a fresh stash of cash totaling $40 million to ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Disaggregating network, compute and storage allocation demystified

Explore the ways disaggregation concepts and principles are being applied to create and allocate pools of compute and storage resources to serve applications on demand. Continue Reading

By

• Arun Taneja, Taneja Group

Red Hat Ceph, Gluster roadmaps focus on HCI, containers

Red Hat's Ceph and Gluster storage roadmaps reflect increased focus on hyper-converged infrastructure, containers and big data, in addition to performance improvements. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

IT infrastructure transformation: Backbone of the digital revolution

Maximizing the value of incoming and outgoing data as a core business strategy demands transforming your IT infrastructure into a more agile and flexible entity. Continue Reading

By

• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

Pure1 META analytics bolsters Pure Storage software

New predictive sizing tool complements other Pure Storage software rollouts from Accelerate. The artificial intelligence engine learns from all workloads running on Pure arrays. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

MapR Technologies launches enterprise file storage product

MapR expands beyond analytics into the enterprise storage market with an exabyte-scale data store designed to manage files and containers in data centers and across clouds. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

DataCore IT survey shows gradual uptake of new storage technologies

A DataCore IT survey on the state of software-defined storage, hyper-converged systems and cloud storage showed a gradual uptake of some of the most heavily promoted new technologies. For instance, ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

2017 IT spending trends for data storage

For the 15^th year, Storage magazine has surveyed storage pros to learn about their IT spending trends for the coming months. As you'd expect, the cloud continues to pick up steam for both primary and secondary projects, while all-flash arrays and SSDs also rated highly. Hyper-converged interest, meanwhile, nearly doubled over 2016. See how your 2017 shopping list compares to today's IT spending trends.

When SSDs supplanted HDDs, it revealed many deficiencies in the traditional RAID array model. Storage vendors changed course, leading to the highly scalable, fast and reliable hyper-converged systems of today. Is it time to go all-in with hyper-convergence?

IT is rapidly evolving to keep pace with today's data-intensive business apps and trends, such as the internet of things. For storage, this means newer silicon tech, inherent analytics, embedding hybrid cloud tiering and (often) convergence with or hosting of core data processing directly, and new management techniques.

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Flash, cloud top data storage options for storage pros

Cloud is popular among data storage priorities for primary and backup storage, while most say they will use flash in primary data storage. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo and James Alan Miller

Flash, cloud top data storage options for storage pros

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Smarter storage starts with analytics

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GDPR compliance grips U.S. firms, too

U.S. organizations are taking General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance at least as seriously as their European Union counterparts, according to a recent survey commissioned by Veritas ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Veritas Enterprise Vault, backup apps embrace Google cloud

Veritas Technologies has been busy cozying up to public cloud providers in 2017, adding an extended partnership with Google to the list this week. The partnership includes Veritas NetBackup and ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

Data storage infrastructure starts with science-fiction inspiration

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Nexsan Unity adds compliance archive appliance

Nexsan Unity arrays integrate optional secure compliance archive for petabytes of unstructured data. Data files written to primary storage are immediately copied to the archive. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Cloudian, Panzura expand cloud data archiving options

Cloudian and Panzura have come up with new cloud data archiving products to help organizations move on-premises data to the cloud. Cloudian's new HyperStore 4000 is a 7U scale-out object storage ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

Hyper-convergence: It's for more than primary data storage

The lines between primary and secondary storage and applications such as hyper-convergence remain blurry. But they are a starting point for further discussion. Continue Reading

By

• Arun Taneja, Taneja Group

Report: Better data theft protection needed for employee exits

The processes for keeping data safe when employees leave a company are fundamental data protection best practices: backup, archive and encryption. Yet barely half of the organizations that took ... Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Using multiple BDR products doesn't always translate into faster data recovery

Companies spend a lot of money on disaster recovery solutions but that doesn’t translate into faster data recovery, according to a survey conducted by Quorum titled the “State of Disaster ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

A look at the future of data storage careers

Thanks to virtualization, the cloud and solid-state technology, data storage professionals and those who want to pursue a career in it face an uncertain future. Continue Reading

By

• Alan R. Earls

Atomic storage offers speed and capacity, lacks intelligence

Dutch scientists studying atomic data storage claim that 500 TB of data can be stored on one square inch, but data management remains elusive. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Hadoop Distributed File System helps tackle big data

Hadoop Distributed File System storage systems are being enlisted to tackle big data thanks to vendors like EMC, Hitachi, IBM and NetApp, and Apache. Continue Reading

By

• John Webster, Evaluator Group

Hadoop data analysis: Common concerns with the HDFS platform

Using HDFS technology as a data analysis platform may be insufficient for your storage needs. Explore the challenges storage administrators may encounter and find out how to address them. Continue Reading

By

• John Webster, Evaluator Group

Vendors, analysts guess future of data storage in 2016

After Rich Castagna offered his look at the future of data storage in 2016, vendors and analysts shared their guesses on what will happen this year. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Backup appliance revenue up slightly

Worldwide factory revenues for backup appliances grew 2.2 percent year-over-year in the third quarter this year, with revenue totaling $813.6 million, according to International Data Corp.'s ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

Dell is EMC's latest potential dance partner

The EMC rumor machine is in full force again today. This time it’s Dell that is reportedly interested in buying all or some of EMC. Of course, if the sources for these rumors were 100% reliable, ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Flash storage and cleaning house

A recent discussion with a client got me thinking about precipitating events that cause IT professionals to “put their house in order” regarding the information they store. In this case, there was ... Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

External storage sales down as market shifts to hyperscale and server-based storage

External storage sales are shrinking. The total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue grew to an $8.8 billion during the second quarter of 2015, according to IDC. However, sales are ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

Big data analytics applications impact storage systems

Analytics applications for big data have placed extensive demands on storage systems, which Mike Matchett says often requires new or modified storage structures. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

Toshiba unveils SAS, NVMe PCIe SSDs at Flash Memory Summit

Count Toshiba among the group of drive makers demonstrating new enterprise PCI Express (PCIe) and SAS SSDs at this week’s Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. Toshiba unveiled three ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Performance counts when buying a solid-state storage device

More than half of our surveyed companies are using flash now, with plans to use it for more than just mission-critical apps. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

SIOS launches iQ, seeks more intelligent analytics

Data protection software vendor SIOS Technologies is branching out into IT analytics. The vendor this week launched SIOS iQ, an analytics platform developed for virtual machines and their ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

A closer look at cloud storage use cases, strategies

Find out how primary storage vendors are closely integrating with cloud storage providers in ways that enable new uses for cloud storage. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Three reasons why object storage is a good HDFS alternative

HDFS manages data across dispersed nodes, but an object storage system that leverages commodity storage can be a compelling alternative. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Vendors predict the future of data storage 2015

The future of data storage isn’t easy to predict. While some vendors see it clearly, others prove that, going into 2015, their crystal balls may be a little hazy. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

EMC to lay off workers; Tucci to stay past February

EMC CEO and chairman Joe Tucci indicated Thursday that he will stay on after his contract expires next month. Others at EMC won’t be given that option, as the company also said it will cut jobs to ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Box shares surged on the first day as a public company

Box Inc. had an excellent coming out party as a public company today. Box priced its initial shares at $14 Thursday. Those shares today opened at $20.20 on the New York Stock Exchange and rose to ... Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

How is big data changing data archiving strategies?

Analyst Jon Toigo explains why performing analytics on big data sets means that data is no longer considered cold, reducing the importance of archives. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

A look at access methods for open systems and mainframes

The term access method is frequently used to identify types of I/O in open systems. Many who use it probably don't understand the historical context for what has been known as an access method for ... Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

EMC's XtremIO 3.0 adds compression with disruptive upgrade for existing users

EMC Corp. made available the 3.0 release of its XtremIO all-flash array today with new inline compression capabilities and performance improvements – but existing customers who want the software ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Deconstructing the storage algorithm

Jon Toigo examines the four steps of the storage algorithm, and concludes that the current storage equation just doesn't add up. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Are SSDs necessary to perform analytics on big data efficiently?

Storage expert Phil Goodwin explains how SSDs can speed up analytics, but solid-state technology is only needed in certain types of environments. Continue Reading

By

• Phil Goodwin, IDC

Something's wrong when storage vendors pitch speeds and feeds

I’m surprised to hear from IT people that storage vendors are still using “speeds and feeds” in their sales pitches. Salesmen for these companies talk about how fast and how big the storage systems ... Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

Choosing storage for streaming large files in big data sets

Learn how to select storage that can both scale and perform to effectively stream large files in big data environments. Continue Reading

External storage might make sense for Hadoop

Using Hadoop to drive big data analytics doesn't necessarily mean building clusters of distributed storage; a good old array might be a better choice. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

How to create a successful data archiving strategy

A good archiving process provides the automation needed to deliver the necessary application granularity while minimizing the impact to IT operations. Continue Reading

By

• Phil Goodwin, IDC

Data archiving technology to keep on the radar

Archival storage options are expanding, getting more resilient and less costly. Find out which technologies are making an impression. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Five questions to ask when choosing a data archiving technology

Many factors need to be considered when determining what the right archiving platform is for you. Jon Toigo highlights the most important in this tip. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Big data storage and analytics

There are two basic types of big data analytics—synchronous and asynchronous—but both have big data storage appetites and specialized needs. Continue Reading

By

• Eric Slack, Evaluator Group

Complete guide to Hadoop technology and storage

Learn how Apache Hadoop works, some of its benefits and drawbacks, and what it means for big data and cloud storage. Continue Reading

Erasure coding brings trade-off of resilience vs. performance

IT's decision on using erasure coding in storage rests on data importance, durability more than amount of data, says storage consultant Marc Staimer. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Big data storage architecture: Categories, strengths and use cases

We explore distributed nodes, scale-out NAS, all-SSD arrays and object storage as choices for a storage architecture for big data. Continue Reading

By

• Phil Goodwin, IDC

Hadoop clusters: Benefits and challenges for big data analytics

Brien Posey explains how Hadoop clusters can be extremely beneficial to large amounts of unstructured data, but aren't ideal for all environments. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Streaming large video files in today's big data environments

Solid-state drives are a good choice for streaming large video files. Other factors to consider include cost and how often video will be accessed. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Can shared storage be used with Hadoop architecture?

Storage expert John Webster discusses three ways to use shared storage together with Hadoop architecture in this Ask the Expert answer. Continue Reading

By

• John Webster, Evaluator Group

Five data protection guidelines for business continuity

Storage expert Jon Toigo offers data protection guidelines to help storage admins achieve the best possible results when protecting data in their care. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Enterprise storage trends: SSDs, capacity optimization, auto tiering

Several enterprise storage trends are emerging at big and small storage vendors. Find out why certain technologies are trending and what they can do for your storage environment. Continue Reading

Using SSD technology to support memory overcommitment in vSphere

Using SSD in a vSphere environment helps with memory overcommitment. Find out how memory overcommitment works and why SSD is better at supporting it than mechanical disk. Continue Reading

By

• Eric Siebert

RAID level comparison chart: A free download

Download our free RAID level comparison chart, where the most important RAID levels are defined, along with information about the pros and cons of each RAID level. Continue Reading

How RAID storage systems protect your application data

RAID storage systems improve application performance and data availability. Learn about RAID levels and choosing the right RAID technology. Continue Reading

By

• Todd Erickson

Implementing an electronic records retention system

Learn the components of an electronic records retention system and best practices for implementing an electronic data discovery policy. Don't risk e-discovery request errors. Continue Reading

Does Nimble dedupe?

Nimble Storage Thursday came out of stealth with a storage system that the startup’s executives said combines primary storage with deduplication for backup in the same device. It makes sense that ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

EDRM: Best practices when preparing for an e-discovery request

We list the nine stages of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), and tell you why the preservation and collection stage is so important to data storage pros. Continue Reading

Iron Mountain acquires Stratify for $158M

Iron Mountain will add legal processing to its e-discovery services through the purchase of its legal review partner. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer