eDiscovery and the Adoption of Cloud Based Solutions

Cloud based solutions are coming to the forefront of the eDiscovery market, bringing about mixed reactions. The discomfort around cloud based solutions comes from security issues and knowing where your data is owned/who owns it. Despite these concerns, organizations are surprisingly ready for the change and predict that they will move their eDiscovery projects to a cloud based solution in the near future.

In a recent webinar with Barry Murphy, Co-Founder of the eDiscovery Journal, he pointed out that typically the legal communities tend to be a few years behind the rest of the technology community. Barry recently conducted a survey, and his studies proved that to be false. In fact, the legal community is right now ahead in the cloud computing market.

In the eDiscovery Journal survey, Barry identified that 70% of organizations plan to rely on using the cloud or a hybrid cloud/on-premise solution for their eDiscovery projects. This large percentage may be due to:

Lower cost

In this economy everyone is looking for a way to lower costs. The cloud will allow users to receive lower cost tools because a software provider is able to spread some of the biggest costs of the software across multiple clients. This allows the SaaS-model to be a lower cost model, and could be representative of a “monthly pay as you go” plan.

Speed

Easy access to data is a tremendous benefit for eDiscovery in the cloud. Not having to utilize multiple applications to pull up data, and not having to deploy an application in your machine makes for an easier process. With the cloud you can do what you need to do, and do it quickly.

Infinite Scalability

SaaS promises infinite scalability which makes it so attractive in the legal market. It gives you “another security blanket” to know that the software can process any sized data set, and you don’t have to take out your entire data center to be able to process it and get it ready for review.

Barry Murphy, Co-Founder of the eDiscovery Journal, and Colby Dyess of Digital Reef, thoroughly examine the Software as a Service (SaaS) model and eDiscovery in the cloud in a Digital Reef webinar. If you missed this webinar please visit our webinar page to listen to a recording, view a transcript or to view slides from Barry Murphy's presentation.