There has been an explosion of vendors offering ediscovery solutions, but there are certain questions to pose to each vendor to obtain a shortlist of the top ediscovery companies. Gartner has undertaken some excellent research into the ediscovery domain, and has produced a research report that provides for a good summary of the pros and cons of each vendor. Although researching the various companies is a good initial option, there are a few pertinent questions that organizations can use to make the selection criteria and assessment process easier. Organizations need to determine the number of file formats that they currently use, and whether this may be expanded into the future. A vendor solution that offers all the bells and whistles, along with handling all the popular file formats, may be overkill for an organisation that only deals with PDF and Word documents. However, as an organisation, you also do not want to select a cheap option that is not scalable and will not be able to handle multiple file formats, and multiple electronic sources (like audio and video) into the future. Also, in terms of scalability, a pertinent question to ask is regarding the potential for archiving scalability. Make sure that the vendor has the option for grid architecture, which enables the spreading of processing load across all of the computing resources.