Software as a Service "SaaS":
How does Software as a service work in the electronic discovery ( eDiscovery, e-Discovery) EDRM model? There are several obvious places that a SaaS (pay for use, or On Demand Software) make a tremendous amount of sense.
Looking at the EDRM model and the SaaS solutions opportunity
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Information Management - Many SaaS Solutions are available in the area of information and document management.
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Identification - This is normally a process that involves both people and technology. Some of the leading forensic as well as archiving companies have products in this space. A number of them now offer their services on a SaaS (pay as point of use), instead of the traditional model which requires that you purchase and install an application prior to your need (and generally at a fairly large price tag). A number of solutions use a Spider type of indexing schema to "Explore and Index" locations, machines, users which may be subject of a litigation hold. Most of these involve installing software and hardware in advance of the need.
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Preservation - This is a highly important aspect of the discovery process and generally is tightly coupled with the collection process. Companies like EnCase have offerings which charge based on point of use for data preservation (collection). This area is one in which I expect that there will be more offerings which use the SaaS model to empower a secure and defensible data preservation process while saving the client money, frustration and time.
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Collection - The collection process has become almost synonymous with preservation in that under normal conditions the preservation process involves securing the data. Many people see collection differing from preservation in areas which involve geographically dispersed data or data that is in less than friendly hands or has privacy issues. There may or may not be SaaS solutions which can help in this area. If the collection is in essence placing a litigation hold and storing a set of the data in a secure place. then SaaS solutions are available and can be very quickly and cost effectively deployed.
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Case Assessment - earlyCASE ® is the leading and only SaaS provider of early case assessment (ECA) for eDiscovery. As an SaaS service earlyCASE ® lets you whenever and wherever you need it. This process can be run on a sample set of the data you have preserved and then extrapolated to provide a very detailed and accurate understanding of the eDiscovery ( electronic discovery) data that you have. Once you understand the data, you can use earlyCASE ® to establish a meaningful budget for the process of collecting, filter and cull, processing and reviewing the discovery in a matter. Because early case is a Software as a service you don't have to spend any money until you need the solution. Because it is deployed on demand, you can run it whenever and where ever you need to understand the e-discovery in a matter.
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Processing - This area has been predominantly dominated by vendors who offer a traditional service offering in which you deliver the data to vendor for processing, which is about as far as you can get from a SaaS model. As the technologies in this area mature there will be companies who offer integrated web based solutions repackage there web based document review application (with integrated eDiscovery processing) as a SaaS offering. Using a SaaS provider of eDiscovery processing will deliver the lowest cost per GB and potentially much faster turnaround times for small to mid size projects. As SaaS changes the options available for eDiscovery processing expect more and more SaaS offerings for electronic discovery processing.
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Review - Many of the Document Review platforms already are SaaS solutions. Some are web based, some are Terminal Services (or Citrix) based. Almost all of them charge for there services based on actual data stored or documents reviewed, etc. Some new packaging of combined offerings are now available which combine the eDiscovery processing and document review into a single charge per document or per page. While not specifically SaaS solutions, many of these combined providers use SaaS solutions as a part of there actual processes.
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Analysis - Many of these solutions are tightly coupled with the processing and review processes and have proprietary technologies which cluster documents to facilitate faster and more meaningful document reviews. The availability of this stage as an SaaS is dependent upon the underlying Processing and Review Solutions.
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Production - This is generally a delivery form coming from the processing and review applications and is dependent upon how the underlying applications that this comes from are delivered to the end user.
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Presentation - This area is related to the actual form that the documents are delivered. Native documents, Tiff Images, PDF's, etc. and is not an area that SaaS will have an impact.
Some Related Links that you may be interested in:
Wiki Definition of SaaS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service
Gartner Forecast of SaaS Market http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=496886
Gartner Top 10 Technologies for 2009 http://www.longjumpblog.com/blog/2007/11/15/gartners-top-10-techologies-for-2009-saas-woa-and-more/
2009 SaaS services Growth http://thinkitservices.blogspot.com/2009/01/gartner-confirms-growing-appeal-of-saas.html