Nuix has participated in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for eDiscovery Software for the past four years. Over that time, the eDiscovery market has changed considerably. Unfortunately, Nuix does not believe Gartner’s analysis of software providers has kept pace.

1. Nuix has participated in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for eDiscovery Software for the past four years.
Over that time, the eDiscovery market has changed considerably. Unfortunately, Nuix does not believe
Gartner’s analysis of software providers has kept pace.
Gartner says its Magic Quadrant evaluations are based on rigorous criteria, deep industry knowledge
and thorough research. The famous two-axis diagram is designed to give the appearance of
mathematical precision. But from our experience in the eDiscovery Magic Quadrant process, it is much
more pseudo than science. Specifically, Gartner analysts:
• Undervalue the impact that exploding data volumes have had on the cost and burden
of eDiscovery projects
• Fail to appreciate that rapidly processing data at scale is the crucial difference between
successful and unsuccessful eDiscovery
• Refuse to acknowledge that vendors they classify as Leaders have underperformed in
the competitive marketplace.
We think these oversights have caused the Gartner Magic Quadrant for eDiscovery Software to break
down. Compounding the error is lack of transparency in Gartner’s research methodology—for example,
how do they evaluate vendors’ technical abilities and who are the eDiscovery practitioners that
contribute to Gartner’s findings?
As a result of Gartner’s distorted market appraisal, enterprise customers have spent millions of dollars
on software and services that didn’t serve their needs. This has given the entire industry a bad name.
All we ask for is a proper evaluation of eDiscovery software with rigorous methodology and a realistic
approach. But Gartner thinks it’s good enough to throw some secret eDiscovery ingredients into a
cauldron, say “hocus pocus” and kaboom! … a Magic Quadrant appears.
An ongoing dialogue
Nuix maintains ongoing dialogue with Gartner’s eDiscovery analysts. Earlier this year we spoke to
Gartner’s analysts about our concerns with their research methodology, stemming from the results of
previous years’ reports.
When Gartner showed us draft sections of this year’s report, which were almost identical to the
previous year’s, we escalated our concerns through Gartner’s Ombudsman. After numerous exchanges
and discussions, the Ombudsman concluded that Gartner and Nuix had different views of the market.
Specifically, the Ombudsman said:
“The Ombudsman maintains the basis of Nuix’s escalation has been a fundamental difference
of opinion with Gartner analysts and the way that they have chosen to evaluate vendors in the
eDiscovery Software market. While we can understand Nuix’s position and its passion for its view, our
investigation shows that the analysts followed proper methodologies and processes in this instance.
The analysts’ approach to this market was vetted and supported by an extended Research team.”
We have created this document and distributed it to our employees and customers to give our side
of the story. We believe it doesn’t matter how accurately Gartner’s analysts follow their methodology
because the process itself is broken.
We shared a draft of this document with Gartner and offered to include or link to their response.
They declined a right of reply.
Why Nuix doesn’t believe in Magic

2. WHY NUIX DOESN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC page 2
Gartner told us ... We say ...
“eDiscovery in corporations doesn’t
involve large volumes of data.”
Our customers tell us that cases involving more than a handful of
custodians can swell to 100 gigabytes or larger.
“Many vendors offer end-to-end
eDiscovery.”
Most vendors’ products can’t process large volumes of data. Without
robust and scalable processing, timely and effective eDiscovery isn’t
possible, no matter what other functionality the software offers.
“We have strict criteria and scoring
methodologies to decide which vendors
make it into the Magic Quadrant and
are classified as Leaders.”
This year Gartner has listed as Leaders vendors that have:
• Left the market entirely
• Shifted the majority of their effort from software development
to services
• Laid off or lost almost all their staff and customers
• Stated publicly the reason for their substantial financial losses
was the success of service providers
• Infuriated customers—some to the point of litigation—by claiming
to provide functionality they simply couldn’t deliver.
“We evaluate vendors’ technical
capabilities.”
To our knowledge, Gartner’s analysts have no practical experience as
eDiscovery practitioners and do not perform any technical evaluation of
the products. They tell us they assess technical abilities by interviewing
eDiscovery practitioners. However, they refuse to provide any details
about who they speak to or what questions they ask.
“We won’t provide details of our
research methodology or demographic
information about the people we
interview.”
Without those details, it’s impossible to know how accurate or realistic
Gartner’s research is. Why does Gartner keep this information secret?
“We evaluate the eDiscovery market
using the EDRM model.”
Gartner has invented its own framework that splits early data assessment,
the “left-hand side” of the EDRM, from analysis, review and production,
the “right-hand side.” This model doesn’t reflect the EDRM or the way
most organizations conduct eDiscovery today.
“Nuix is a ‘left-hand side’ technology
because its key strength is processing.”
This doesn’t even make sense given Gartner says processing is primarily a
“right-hand side” activity. We don’t understand why Gartner ignores Nuix’s
abilities across the EDRM while giving other vendors credit for capabilities
that don’t work or that customers only use in very limited ways.
“We don’t pay attention to the litigation
service provider market, which is
shrinking as corporations bring their
eDiscovery functions in-house.”
Where is the evidence? Our insights into the market come from working
with almost all the major service providers and advisory firms worldwide.
They tell us business is booming. They are buying more software from
Nuix and many have grown their volume of business five or six times over
the past few years.
Gartner’s magical thinking

3. WHY NUIX DOESN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC page 3
Our argument in detail
Gartner thinks eDiscovery involves small volumes of data
Gartner analysts believe that day-to-day eDiscovery does not involve large volumes of data. Our
experience with corporate and service provider customers shows that in the age of big data, there is
no longer such a thing as a “small case.”
The average enterprise email mailbox is multiple gigabytes for each custodian. eDiscovery typically
also involves data in file shares, SharePoint, archives, laptops, cloud email, cloud storage,
smartphones and “bring your own” devices. As a result, any case that involves more than five or ten
people can quickly swell to hundreds of gigabytes.
Nuix technology is proven to work against very large volumes of data faster than any other technology.
Gartner says corporate customers want an end-to-end eDiscovery solution from a single vendor. It
claims some vendors in the Leaders quadrant provide this end-to-end capability. But we know that in
many cases, these vendors fail at the critical point: Processing more than 100 or 200 or 500 gigabytes
at a time.
Gartner can only claim these vendors provide end-to-end functionality if it ignores whether or not their
technology works at scale.
Gartner doesn’t know its left hand from its right
Gartner analysts claim their market evaluation is based on industry-standard EDRM model. In reality,
they have invented their own model which splits the “left-hand side” of the EDRM from the “right-
hand side.”
They say the left-hand side is about early case assessment, or what EDRM co-founder George Socha
says should be more accurately called “early data assessment.” This typically comprises identification,
collection and preservation, and sometimes processing. They believe these tasks are performed either
internally or by litigation service providers. The right-hand side, Gartner analysts believe, is processing,
analyzing, reviewing and producing documents. This is a function primarily performed by in-house
lawyers or law firms, they say.
The analysts say a vendor provides “end-to-end” eDiscovery capability if it offers some functionality
from the left-hand and right-hand sides.
This division may have made sense four years ago when Gartner created the first Magic Quadrant but
it is meaningless today.
Many corporate and government customers seek to collect, process and analyze data internally
to evaluate their risk exposure and whether or not they have a chance of winning. Some aim to
conduct the entire discovery process in-house. Others engage service providers to do the heavy
lifting—collection and processing in some specialized circumstances, but more often analysis, review
(human and technology-assisted) and production.
Nuix has dozens of corporate customers who use our software internally and dozens of service
provider customers who use it on behalf of clients. Some use Nuix on its own, some combine our
software with other applications such as review platforms.
Gartner analysts maintain that Nuix is a “left-hand side” technology because its key strength is
processing, even though they also say processing is usually conducted on the “right-hand side.”
This doesn’t make sense to us and we can’t convince the analysts to change their opinion.
They really don’t know their left hand from their right.

4. WHY NUIX DOESN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC page 4
What does being a “leader” mean?
Gartner’s eDiscovery Magic Quadrant reports include long blocks of text to explain how it decides which
vendors to include and which vendors are Leaders. Gartner has very strict rules about who is allowed to
quote from these explanations, so we can’t include them here. But anyone who takes the time to read
them will see they’re a jumble of laundry lists, contradictions and opinions dressed up as facts.
For example, Gartner analysts say Leader vendors must offer functionality from the “left-hand” and
“right-hand” sides of the EDRM. This is one of the main reasons they give for excluding Nuix from
the Leaders Quadrant. However, in their description of Nuix, they include a list of capabilities that go
from the left-hand side to the right-hand side. By contrast, some of the vendors listed do not offer a
credible functionality on both sides of the line, according to the Gartner analysts themselves, but still
qualify as Leaders.
Gartner analysts also say vendors in the Magic Quadrant should be focused on developing and selling
software rather than services. Yet it prominently includes vendors that earn much more revenue
from services than software. Some of them started out as software developers but are now almost
entirely service providers. The Magic Quadrant even includes some service providers that use Nuix as
their primary eDiscovery engine. On the other hand, it leaves out some of the world’s largest service
providers because they don’t make software. We don’t mind if Gartner includes or excludes service
providers, but it would be nice if they were consistent!
Gartner’s evaluation criteria also require that vendors continue to develop their eDiscovery software
and remain financially viable. What must be most embarrassing for Gartner is many of the vendors
in the Leaders Quadrant have gone significantly and publicly backwards. They have dropped market
share, laid off large numbers of staff and suffered plummeting revenues and significant financial
losses. Some have abandoned eDiscovery almost entirely.
Gartner doesn’t allow us to quote the Magic Quadrant report directly, but its descriptions for “Leaders”
in this year’s report say things like:
• Customers say this product is hard to install and upgrade
• Customers must be careful not to spend a lot on services with this product
• Customers are not satisfied with this vendor’s ECA, visualization and processing capabilities
• Customers say this vendors’ products are expensive, complex and hard to use
• Customers identify problems with this product’s performance, scalability and
production functionality
• The departure of the company’s CEO may cause disruption.
We’re not saying this to rejoice in our competitors’ misfortunes. But we wonder how bad things have
to get before Gartner stops listing vendors as “Leaders.”
Gartner can’t (or won’t) evaluate technical capabilities
A fundamental question to ask when evaluating technology products is “Do they work?” Specifically,
do they deliver the functionality that most customers need today?
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant includes many eDiscovery software companies whose software cannot
process the volumes or types of data that are now routinely involved in litigation. Without this
capability, timely and effective eDiscovery is not possible.
The Magic Quadrant report never says explicitly that Gartner evaluates vendors’ capabilities. To our
knowledge, Gartner analysts do not install, run through, benchmark or otherwise technically evaluate
any software packages. The analysts have told us verbally that they ask the interviewees about
technical performance during their research process. We’ve asked them directly who they speak to,
what questions they ask and what answers they receive. They won’t tell us.

5. WHY NUIX DOESN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC page 5
With Gartner, everything’s a secret
Any credible research report provides a thorough explanation of its methodology and demographic
information about the people interviewed. What weighting does it give to different capabilities?
What are its evaluation criteria and where does it draw the line? How does it validate vendors’
claims? What size organizations are the interviewees from? What roles do they perform? What is their
involvement in day-to-day operations? Which countries are they from? Do they change from year to year?
Gartner doesn’t share this information with its customers or the industry. Without this information,
it is impossible for customers to evaluate if the research was sound and applicable to their situation.
For instance, if the interviewees were mainly lawyers from top law firms, the results would have little
bearing on corporate IT departments.
Gartner ignores litigation service providers and believes they are doomed
Gartner analysts claim the service provider market is becoming commoditized and will shrink as more
corporations bring their eDiscovery functions in-house. They have maintained this position since the
Magic Quadrant began but there is little evidence to support it.
At Nuix, we deal with enterprises that insource their eDiscovery work, some that outsource everything
to service providers and many that insource and outsource depending on the circumstances.
As far as we can tell, Gartner does not analyze the volume of data or the number of eDiscovery cases
undertaken by service providers. They tell us “We don’t cover that market.” But service providers and
advisory firms conduct the majority of corporate and government eDiscovery work in the world today
We concede there has been some consolidation of service providers, such as DTI’s acquisition of
Applied Discovery in January, but the rate of market consolidation is not extraordinary. We also
agree that some enterprise customers are bringing their eDiscovery functions in-house—indeed we
have helped some very large organizations do this. But there is also still movement in the opposite
direction: Organizations abandoning in-house eDiscovery and giving their business to service
providers. For example, in its most recent 10-K filing, Guidance Software disclosed that the shift
toward service providers had limited its success in the eDiscovery market.
The feedback we have from our many top- and mid-tier service provider customers is that business is
booming. Their purchases of software from Nuix reflects this.
For example, one mid-western US firm has grown into a leading international provider of eDiscovery
services since starting out in 2007. It has been included in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing
private companies in the United States thanks to three-year revenue growth of 139%. This provider
uses Nuix extensively for eDiscovery processing, search, analysis and production. In the past three
years, this company has increased its Nuix licensing capacity more than five-fold, reflecting the
massive growth in its business and the volume of data it handles.
Our advisory firm clients tell us they are taking on more staff and growing revenue in eDiscovery and
related fields such as digital forensics and information governance. We are selling them more software,
not less. One firm has increased its eDiscovery staffing around the world five-fold in just three years
and we believe this is representative of all the Big Four.
We invite our eDiscovery service provider customers to share their growth stories with Gartner
analysts. We also encourage the Gartner analysts to explain what evidence they have to support their
conclusion that the litigation support industry is shrinking.
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