Litigation Support Today published an article in their February/April ’09 publication called “ABA Outsourcing Opinion – What it Mean to You as a Litigation Support Professional”. It discusses the August 5, 2008 opinion 08-451 released by the American Bar Association (“ABA”), regarding legal teams responsibility of results from outsourced services. In the past attorney’s could place blame on vendors for data processing mistakes, this article explains how they now have to bear the responsibility. This is a great example of how having a SaaS solution for electronic discovery processing can help put control in the firms hands for processing results, eliminating the worry of being held responsible for someone else’s work and managing an outsourced vendor.

Though IPRO’s ESI processing software can be purchased by anyone for on-premises installation, it is often acquired by those who can roll-out the infrastructure to support such a powerful application. It seems that it may be the very implementation of these applications that prevents some firms from handling this work in-house. If the implementation is the obstacle, and the desire is there to take ESI processing in-house, the solution is to go SaaS.

IPRO’s Software as a Service offering, IPRO Nimbus, allows for direct control over the ESI processing but from a remote location where the only resource needed to get the processing completed is an Internet connection. IPRO Nimbus, started out as a try-before-you buy concept for evaluation of the eCapture product but has been growing in popularity to be used as one of the many choices available to those in need of ESI processing solutions. The flexible offering seems to be a natural fit for those Lit Support professionals looking for a way to take control of that responsibility without cumbersome installation requirements or long-term commitments.

 

The whirlwind called LegalTech NY is behind us and now it’s time to incorporate all the great suggestions and feedback into IPRO Eclipse in preparation for the release.  IPRO Eclipse was previewed in three locations: the IPRO Eclipse booth, the main booth, and in the Suite.   The interest was overwhelming and extremely positive. It clearly is a product the marketplace needs. The planned release date is 6/2009 and it will be launched at LegalTech West with a big party and celebration.  

For those of you who have not heard about IPRO Eclipse, it’s a litigation database (IPRO Database and SQL Server options) that gives you the power to effectively control all aspects of your case from capture to production. It was designed from the ground up to support foreign language documents (Unicode) and large document collections. It eliminates the need for you to move data between multiple applications to do your job. We took everything we learned in 20 years of supporting the legal marketplace and created a new database solution; that consolidates both your electronic data and imaged data into one unified database.

I would like to hear what features and functionality you would like to see in IPRO Eclipse; and what is a priority for you and your organization.

Whenever I hear the discussion of speed in the use of a SaaS technology or 'cloud-computing' I get the same gut reaction of hearing someone say, 'how hard is it?'

Just like a person's reference of how difficult a task is can vary so greatly, so can the impression of speed when talking about a responsive Internet connection or use of web-based applications in general.

When I am asked about the 'speed' of the SaaS environment we offer there are so many benefits in relation to speed it is difficult to know where to start.

Anyone considering the route of SaaS solutions may be intrigued by the 'speed' to adopt a solution and be operational. With no need to purchase equipment, configure those components into an existing network infrastructure, or installation of a new application. The 'speed' to adopt is by far superior to any on premises implementation.

Then there is the 'speed' of upgrades to the application. Many SaaS applications upgrade without the user recognizing. A popular web meeting program will simply notify you the next time you login that a new version has been updated and you need to perhaps upgrade a few Active-X controls. Our offering goes even farther to schedule upgrades with each individual user allowing for a scheduled upgrade that does not conflict with any business processes and the 'speed' benefit comes from having that third party handle all the arrangements from pre-tasks, process of upgrade, and post tasks to verify everything runs smoothly.

The last one I will mention is the most common interpretation of 'speed'; what the end user experiences when connecting to the web site to obtain access to their SaaS application. Of course there are a plethora of components that can affect this 'speed' both positively and negatively. There are the considerations of what is bandwidth available to the user logging in, but this is also going to be experienced if that user is attempting to remote into their work pc from home or on the road through some sort of a VPN connection such as Citrix or Terminal Services, and who’s to say connection to their local file server is degraded due to some other activities occurring on the corporate environment.

 Also is the available bandwidth through the SaaS provider to their service. This concern is legitimate considering all the host review applications that are out there. However if you are receiving your review software through a true SaaS provider, the network implementation is typically far superior than the average hosting server in the same server room as everything else within a business. Why? It's simple, that is the competitive advantage and core purpose for SaaS providers to offer the most reliable and efficient access. It is unlikely that the IT staff that has all the concerns of any other corporate IT department will put in the same level of technology or scrutiny to host a review application in-house than a SaaS provider implements in their services.