Recommind has announced that its eDiscovery review and analysis platform, Axcelerate, now works seamlessly to bring discovery and data analytics to cloud content stored on Box.

The press release is here.

Put briefly, a custom-built connector allows Recommind’s Axcelerate to crawl through an index data stored on Box and then aggregate that data with an organisation’s other data sources, whether stored on their own servers or elsewhere in the cloud. De-duplication and culling can be done in situ, and data is then transferred to Axcelerate for further analysis and the further stages of electronic discovery.

Why does this matter? The simple answer is that more and more organisations are putting their data into the cloud. A further answer is provided in a Recommind blog post of 17 July by Adam Kuhn and headed New sanctions ruling spotlights importance of handling a discovery in the cloud.

The article tells the story of a defendant who claimed inability to produce data because it was stored in the cloud. By the time their excuses had run out, much of the data had been deleted. The sanction – that they are precluded from presenting and relying on critical evidence – will probably cause what Adam Kuhn refers to tactfully as “an unfavourable resolution of the matter”. They must also pay a year’s worth of the plaintiff’s costs.

It is quite easy for an IT department to decide to move data to the cloud; the apparent savings can be very significant. Before they go too far down this route, however, it might be an idea for somebody, perhaps the lawyers, to ask how easy it is to get it back again.