Kazeon and Clearwell square off in e-discovery price prizefight

I need to start a category on this blog called “Vendorfights.” Today’s squabble comes from two e-discovery players. In this corner: Kazeon, which recently announced that they can do your data collection work for the price of a latte. In this corner: Clearwell, whose corporate blogger responded to that with snark:

The answer (in press releases, as in politics) lies in definitions. Exactly what sort of processing would you be getting for your four dollars and change?

You’ll have to ask Kazeon to get the answer to that one, but give a venti latte to a bleary-eyed e-discovery service provider who’s just pulled an all-nighter preparing for a meet-and-confer, and they’ll tell you all about the nuances, complexities, and risks inherent in e-discovery processing that may be difficult for enterprise search/information lifecycle management vendors to grasp.

I found out about this from a Kazeon rep (despite how severely Clearwell dissed his them). To the contrary, Kazeon sees this as the start of a price war in this space as competitors flood in.

Another e-discovery blogger (Who knew there were so many?) agrees:

Any way you crunch the numbers, position the cost or spin the offering, it is just flat alarming and bordering on unbelievable for both users and technology vendors in the eDiscovery market. Bottom line, whether or not you believe that Kazeon is comparing true eDiscovery apples with the rest of the apples in the market, it doesn’t matter as this is definitely the first shot across the bow of the rest of the eDiscovery vendors..

It’s a draw for me so far, being new to this debate. What do YOU think?