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Unaffected by Email “Software Glitch”

Over the past several days, Stratify has received inquiries from its customers and business partners about a Microsoft Outlook “bug” that reportedly went undetected by another leading electronic discovery support provider. This situation purportedly caused the text of emails processed in that tool to appear blank even though the original email files were not.

The article, “Software Glitch May Have Erased E-Mail Text in Enron Suits,” August 10, 2006 (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1155114328355), and a subsequent clarification published the following day on Law.com, describe how the bug can affect the display of certain Microsoft Outlook 2000 email files when viewed using Microsoft Outlook 2003. According to sources quoted in Law.com, the problem may have caused at least one AmLaw 50 firm involved in the Enron litigation not to review all text of client-gathered email.

The August 10th article also states that one of the firms involved in the litigation sent a letter to all other counsel warning that the bug may have negatively affected email processed by the retained vendor “during the period of October 2004 through April 2006 – and quite possibly electronic e-mail processing handled by other document processing vendors." Stratify’s customers and business partners have specifically inquired about this latter comment.

Stratify has not encountered any of the kinds of problems described in Law.com, and has since notified its customers and business partners accordingly. Stratify early-on identified a solution that ensured that the content of Microsoft Outlook 2000 email files was correctly extracted, whether using Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2000. While the August 10th article states that the vendor is still working with Microsoft to “fix” the problem, Microsoft actually first notified the public about the bug as early as January 2004 (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833984), and provided the fix in its ”hot-fix” for Outlook 2003 in January, 2004. Stratify always uses relevant Service Pack(s) and hot-fixes, combined with intensive quality assurance testing methods, to avoid the kinds of avoidable problems described in the recent articles.

Since the company’s founding in 1999, Stratify has always taken great care in how it handles and displays hundreds of native electronic file formats, including Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2003 email. Sophisticated native electronic document extraction, processing, clustering and hosting is our business. Before beginning any job, we make sure we understand the various attributes, limitations and peculiarities of the native electronic files at hand, whether created in English or a foreign language environment. Our customers and business partners deserve nothing less.

If you have any further questions or concerns about the recent published reports or how our extraction and processing capabilities compare to other electronic discovery providers, please contact Sanjeev Srivastav, Stratify’s Vice President, Services at 650-210-2738.

Sincerely yours,