Image by Daniel Penfield
Lateral Data is now offering its Viewpoint e-discovery software as a hosted, web application, parent company Xerox Corp. said Monday.
Customers typically run Viewpoint at their own locations. In the new version, Xerox will host the software to ease customers of IT responsibilities, but the customers retain control of the web applications running e-discovery processes such as collection, processing, and early case assessment, chief technology officer Paul Matthews explained.
Viewpoint on the cloud is also a good choice for customers who could see themselves later upgrading to Xerox's managed service, OmniX, which is fully managed by Xerox Litigation Services. With that, "We take all data-related e-discovery tasks and processes off their hands, from data loading through to application administration, production, and project management," Matthews said. As such, "If a customer chooses to use hosted Viewpoint and later migrates to OmniX, it certainly makes it easier having the data in the same facility," he noted.
"We have many customers that are utilizing Viewpoint on-premise for upstream e-discovery processes or for day-to-day matters, and opting to migrate more IT- and data-intensive matters for Xerox to host," Matthews continued. The standard version of Viewpoint will "absolutely not" be phased out, he said.
"The financial incentive for a hosted solution is relieving the cost and burden of IT infrastructure, resources, on-going management and scalability associated with on-premise installation. Some customers have this need, others don't. By providing both options, we can provide a solution for customers with either," he added.
Beyond just having software residing online, Xerox is increasingly sharing technology between Viewpoint and OmniX. Officials previously indicated forthcoming improvements in data type support, document management integration, and workflow updates. Both versions are also now on the same numbering scheme: OmniX released version 5.4 in October, with Viewpoint version 5.4 following in November. Xerox also recently created mobile access for OmniX, but has not disclosed such plans for Viewpoint.
Brendan Schulman, a New York-based e-discovery attorney at Kramer Levin Neftalis & Frankel, said his firm began putting most of their new cases into Viewpoint. Schulman said his first exposure to Viewpoint, a year ago, was through local discovery provider Smart Data which hosted the software on its own.
"For larger projects that come along, where there'd be a need to have a hosted solution, we would anticipate using whatever vendors out there provide it, whether it's Xerox or Smart Data or anyone else," Schulman said. Kramer Levin is transitioning away from LexisNexis Concordance, he added.
Xerox did not disclose the cost of on-premise Viewpoint software compared to its web application.
Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send email or follow him on Twitter.
