Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2010-04-30 09:14:14  Just after writing my story about how hybrid on-premise software and hosted SaaS solutions are making an impact in the eDiscovery market, I came across a great post by Ray Wang, my former colleague at Forrester Research.  Ray is one of those analysts who is smart, knows his market, and can explain a complex topic in terms understandable to the masses.Ray really breaks down the four key parts that both on-premise and cloud-based models share: consumption (how end-users interact with the appliation); creation (how developers build the application); orchestration (how parts of the application are pulled from the app server); and infrastructure (where key elements of the app like servers and storage live).  What’s great about Ray’s analysis framework here is that it allows readers to understand that apps can be consumed and delivered in different ways, regardless of where the infrastructure for the app lives.  In the eDiscovery world, this happens all the time, with review interfaces delivered on machines in Columbus, OH while the storage and data live in New York, NY.  In this example, though, you will need to take into account that there is often a bandwidth bottleneck with remote applications due to the large volumes of ESI involved in many matters.Figure 2 in Ray’s post lays out much of what you will want to consider when thinking about cloud-based vs. on-premise solutions.  Ray also gets into the tradeoffs between cost and flexibility.  The flexibility consideration is key – in the past, one of the biggest arguments for on-premise software was the ability to customize to specific organizational needs.  Let’s face it, no two organizations are exactly alike and IT people like to be able to tweak software solutions to meet the requirements of users.What it means is that organizations need to get legal and IT on the same page to define requirements.  IT needs to express a strategy for whether or not it wants to buy off-the-shelf software and customize it, administer it, and manage it.  Legal needs to define what elements of a user interface it needs for the variety of eDiscovery activities it undertakes.  This communication gap has tripped up many an organization.  Hopefully, IT folks can look at the frameworks Ray provides and better understand the context of on-premise / SaaS / cloud solutions for their organizations.

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