So there's been a lot of talk recently about "cloud computing." What is "cloud computing?" Essentially it refers to the increased practice of some companies to outsource the provision of hardware, software and human resources to deliver, store and manage digital data offsite. The idea is that outside service providers can achieve economies of scale, thereby lowering the cost for providing these types of services to their customers.
Not surprisingly, "cloud computing" raises a whole host of challenging electronic discovery issues. With "cloud computing," a company may be accessing data storage on computers owned and operated by other entities located anywhere in the world. Although the company likely continues to "own" its own data stored on those computers, there may be issues regarding the company's ability to access information about that data, like information about when the data has been accessed and by whom. That sort of information can be a critical component of e-discovery.
Also, what about preservation? I've written before about the importance of litigation holds and effective document retention plans. But a company's ability effectively to preserve data hosted on computers owned by another entity halfway around the globe may be difficult to coordinate. Even production of data on those offsite computers likely will add numerous challenges.
In-house counsel at large companies who either already are outsourcing some of these data functions, or who anticipate doing so in the future, would be well advised to start thinking about some of these logistical issues now. Ideally they would be addressed in the service agreements between the company and the "cloud computing" entity.
If you are interested in reading more about some of these challenges, here are a couple of links to recent articles on law.com and infoworld.com.
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