In this video interview I talk to Adi Elliott, Vice President of Market Planning at Epiq Systems, about the role of managed services for eDiscovery.
Adi Elliott came into Epiq with Iris Data Services, which Epiq had acquired a few months earlier. The special feature which made Iris attractive to Epiq was the eDiscovery managed services offering which Iris had developed, including its award winning Arc which gives corporations and law firms their own Relativity environment for a fixed monthly fee.
Adi Elliott points out that companies are happy to commit their key client and financial data to servers and services managed by others. The Iris model brings that broader business trend to eDiscovery, with benefits which include control and cost certainty.
He points out that originally only the biggest law firms in the world could bring products like Relativity in house, with the commitment not just to software licences but to hardware and skills. Managed services brings these tools to the masses.
The definition of “in house” has changed, he says. It used to imply ownership of servers and their physical presence. Now it simply implies control, with the servers and services run by others. It is the managed services concept and applications like Arc which enable this.
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