eDiscovery Daily Blog
eDiscovery Trends: The Only Prescription is More Cloud
A famous “philosopher” once said, “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell”. Sorry, I couldn’t resist…that line always makes me laugh. 😉
It seems that many corporations and law firms “got a fever” and “the only prescription is more cloud”.
As we noted earlier this week, Forrester has forecast that the global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) “cloud” computing market will grow from 40.7 billion dollars in 2011 to more than 241 billion dollars by 2020 – a six-fold increase. In addition, the Gartner Group has projected that the cloud computing industry will have revenue of 148.8 billion dollars by 2014 – an even faster growth rate than Forrester’s forecast of 118.7 billion dollars for the same year.
So, there are the predictions. The question is why?
One reason is the continued trend toward decentralization and globalization of organizations today. In my recent interview with Jeffrey Brandt, Editor of the Pinhawk Law Technology Daily Digest, he noted that a 250 lawyer firm in Ohio was the 83rd largest law firm in the country several years ago, but now that same sized firm might not make it into the AMLAW 250. Firms are growing and, as technology shrinks the world for many organizations, the barriers to expansion (even globally) are minimized. Cloud computing technology is one of the ways in which technology shrinks the world today and enables decentralized organizations share applications and data.
And then, there is the economy.
In the past few years, many corporations and law firms have reduced their IT staffs – in some cases, significantly. Also, while the use of technology has continued to increase “by leaps and bounds”, expenditures for training or upgrading skill sets has lagged behind. Cloud computing technology solves this issue because the burden of keeping up with technology advances is shifted from the organization to the service provider. As a result, many organizations are finding that “the only prescription for their fever” is “more cloud”.
In the coming days, we will discuss other cloud benefits as well as issues to consider and address before making the move to the cloud.
So, what do you think? Is your organization storing more data in the cloud? Does your organization have an effective plan in place for getting to the data when litigation strikes? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
As we are off on Monday for the Memorial Day holiday, eDiscoveryDaily would like to thank all veterans and the men and women serving in our armed forces and the sacrifices you make for our country. Thanks to all of you and your families and have a happy and safe Memorial Day!