Not a killer app but a bloody good technology that does the job

It is not often you come across a use of technologies that just does a great job and is easy to get up and running at a reasonable price, especially in the enterprise. I have just got back from LegalTech East in NYC (I call it the high school reunion event for the legal space) - it has changed over the 2 years I have attended from inward looking delivery of solutions to law firms and groupware like applications for the Legal Department at public companies to emerging enterprise solutions for public companies around regulatory, compliance and litigation needs. Now the likes of Interwoven, OpenText, EMC, NetApp, BlueArc & other enterprise solution providers attend - one group that is emerging is the pure play "archiving" companies that have arrived on the scene - they solve the needs of many organisations to be better prepared (not totally prepared) for litigation, have a technology solution that addresses much of the needs of many regulatory bodies scrutinising an organisation and offers a way for senior management to monitor and to better pin point where to internally investigate for potential problems that could create serious risk to a public company - a few companies have really got the value proposition articulated, are delivering quality solutions and can be implemented seamlessly into a organisation's infrastructure, not causing pain to the CIO or users - they are rising stars, the ones I have been impressed by are: Archivas, Kazeon & Permabit, I am sure there are a few more and I guess the storage guys, the data management powerhouses and BI vendors will soon be watching them in their back mirror, and so they should - as it is not often a client pays for a technology that delivers to spec.