3 Reasons Why a Cloud Based e-Discovery Platform Cuts Costs
In the field of e-discovery, where tackling mounds of data is the greatest challenge, technology is indispensable. Specialized applications enable legal teams to search and review volumes of data that would be beyond the practical capacity of purely human review. These applications speed the process of finding and producing relevant documents and weeding out those that are privileged.
Generally speaking, the e-discovery applications that power this process are of two kinds. There are applications hosted in the “cloud,” also known as software-as-a-service or SaaS. And there are locally hosted applications, sometimes referred to as enterprise software or appliance-based software.
For lawyers involved in major e-discovery matters, choosing the right platform is critical. Whether within a firm or a corporation, the lawyer must weigh the pluses and minuses of each type of platform and select the type most suited to the matters at hand.
Many articles could be—and have been—written about the benefits of the cloud over a local installation, and vice versa. Advantages of cloud applications include on-demand availability and scalability to meet the power and capacity demands of any size of project. Advantages of enterprise software include direct control and access.
However, one point of comparison on which little has been written is cost. Evaluating the cost of the cloud versus local is difficult because it’s like comparing apples to oranges. The costs that go into one are not identical to those that go into the other. This creates confusion in the market, with one approach or the other being touted as lower cost, without taking into consideration the full panoply of related expenses.
TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP
The most accurate comparison of these competing platforms is one that looks at the total cost of ownership—i.e., one that factors in all the direct and indirect expenditures required to use and support the application. These include software and hardware, infrastructure, and operating and personnel costs, among others.
With help from several e-discovery experts and analysts, we examined the total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud-based versus enterprise-based e-discovery applications to see how they compared. The result was dramatic. Using our most conservative figures, the cloud produced cost savings of 36 percent—$2.3 million—over the enterprise software.
Click here to read the rest of the article that covers:
• How to construct a Total Cost of Ownership Model
• Consideration of up-front costs
• How to calculate and compare recurring fees
• Modeling operational and staffing expenses
• Intangible cost considerations
This article originally appeared in the ABA Law Practice Management Magazine, March/April 2013 issue.
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About the Author
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Repository Systems, an international provider of cloud-based e-discovery technologies, and document repositories for e-discovery and complex litigation. He spent more than 20 years as a partner and trial lawyer with Holland & Hart in Denver. He is a past chair of the ABA Law Practice Management Section (LPM) and a former editor of Law Practice and Law Practice Today.
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