SaaS and eDiscovery: Load Your Own Data

November 5, 2010

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications hosted “in the cloud” are continuing to become more popular. A new IDC study forecasts the SaaS market to reach $40.5 billion by 2014, an annual growth rate of 25.3%. Also by 2014, about 34% of all new business software purchases will be via SaaS applications, according to IDC.

If you haven’t used a SaaS application, you haven’t used the Internet. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and YouTube are all examples of SaaS applications. Ever shared a document via Google Docs with a colleague or business partner? Use SalesForce.com for Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? These are SaaS applications too.

Like any software application, SaaS applications are driven by data. Many enable you to upload your own data to use and share via the Web. Facebook and YouTube enable you to upload and share pictures and videos, Google Docs is designed for sharing and maintaining business documents, and even SalesForce.com allows you to upload contacts via a comma-separated values (CSV) file.

eDiscovery SaaS Applications

SaaS applications have also become increasingly popular in eDiscovery (especially for review and production of ESI) with several eDiscovery SaaS applications available that provide benefits including: no software to install, intuitive browser-based interfaces and ability to share the collection with your client, experts, and co-counsel without distributing anything more than a login.

However, most eDiscovery SaaS applications do not enable the user to upload their own data. Or, if they do, it can be costly.

One exception is OnDemand™, which has now rolled out the new SelfLoader™ module in beta to enable clients to load their own data. With SelfLoader, clients can load their own images, OCR text files, native files and metadata to an existing OnDemand database using an industry-standard load file (IPRO’s .lfp or Concordance’s .opt) format.

The best part? You can load your data for free. With SelfLoader, OnDemand provides full control to load your own data, add your own users and control their access rights.

Is this a start of a trend in eDiscovery? Will more eDiscovery SaaS providers provide self-loading capabilities? What do you think? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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