Image Gallery: OpenText Enfuse 2018
Some 1,500 attendees – including law enforcement, public and private security officials, and partners – from 40 countries gathered last week for OpenText‘s Enfuse 2018 conference in Las Vegas.
The conference homed in on OpenText’s growth strategy as the enterprise information management (EIM) company increasingly focuses on security, the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). The theme of the annual conference was bringing security to the edges of the network and beyond.
Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s vice chair, CEO and CTO, detailed his company’s increasing capabilities, and slammed IBM Watson, saying his company’s Magellan AI platform is superior.
The conference also featured a keynote with controversial figure James Comey, former director of the FBI who President Trump abruptly fired last year. In between talking about cybersecurity and effective leadership, Comey took shots at the president, which drew laughs and applause from attendees.
For its third quarter ending March 31, OpenText reported 22 customer transactions totaling more than $1 million, including 10 OpenText Cloud and 12 on-premises. Acquisitions have been and will continue to be a major part of the company’s growth strategy, Barrenechea said. It previously acquired Guidance Software, and during the quarter it acquired Hightail, a cloud service for file sharing and creative collaboration.
Gary Weiss, OpenText’s senior vice president and general manager of security, discovery and analytics, said “in this information age you have to have security and start at the endpoint.”
Click through our gallery below for pictures and event highlights.
Enfuse 2018 kicked off with a keynote by Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s vice chair, CEO and CTO. He told attendees that digital makes business very complex today and "we need to make it simpler."
"We are all becoming software companies … and the gig economy is creating congestion everywhere," he said. "It has never been a busier time in software, and it’s invigorating."
In the expo hall, OpenText provided demonstrations of Axcelerate, its end-to-end e-discovery platform with proprietary advanced analytics, services and support, predictive coding and internet-of-things (IoT) capabilities. OpenText increased those capabilities through its acquisition of Covisint, a cloud platform for building digital identity management, IoT applications, and automotive and transportation supply chains.
Digital Intelligence, a provider of digital forensics and e-discovery, is an OpenText VAR/SI. It both resells OpenText products and also incorporates OpenText into its systems. It offers products, forensic and e-discovery consulting services and training.
Digital forensics provider Sumuri integrates Tableau, which OpenText gained through its acquisition of Guidance Software last year, into its Talino forensics workstation.
Logicube manufactures hard drive duplication and forensic acquisition hardware. Its products work with EndCase eDiscovery, which OpenText gained through its acquisition of Guidance Software.
James Comey, former director of the FBI who was abruptly fired by President Trump last year, told attendees he sees the increasing trend of "security crashing into security," as in privacy clashing with law enforcement, and the issue of whether "we want wide swaths of data off limits to jurisdiction."
OpenText said it took heat for having Comey at its conference, but his jabs at the president prompted applause, and he receive a standing ovation.
In a breakout session, D. Kall Loper, director at Protiviti, led a presentation on the components of an effective incident-response (IR) plan. Typical IR plans can lead to poor information flow, frustration and costly delays, wasting critical time during phases of IR and investigations, he said.
A good IR plan should be brief, clear, resilient and living, meaning it can adapt to organizational and practice change with minimal document change.
Attendees take a break in the expo hall between breakout sessions. OpenText will continue “making key investments” in its cloud platform, while remaining on the lookout for more acquisition targets to keep growing its business, Barrenechea said.
Digital-forensics firm Evimetry launched its product, which works with OpenText's EndCase eDiscovery, during the conference. It accelerates the workflow at the front end of forensic processes, including acquisition, live analysis, triage and remote forensics. Digital forensics is the recovery and investigation of material found in digital devices, often in relation to computer crime.
Gary Weiss, OpenText’s senior vice president and general manager of security, discovery and analytics, told attendees the volume of cyberattacks is exploding while there is a shortage of resources to combat those attacks.
OpenText's growing security business is focused on three things: being the "gold standard" for forensic investigations; providing seamless enterprise discovery; and predictive detection and response.
(Left to right) OpenText's Gary Weiss led a panel discussion on cybersecurity with Alun Milford, the U.K. Serious Fraud Office's general counsel; Brian Coleman, Pfizer's senior manager of global information security and digital forensics; and David Tyburski, Wynn Resorts' chief information security officer.
They talked about the challenges posed by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is now in effect. There are still a lot of unknowns regarding GDPR and how organizations will be impacted, so it "will be unique to see how it all shakes out," Tyburski said.
