It is now open knowledge that the global market leading eDiscovery software, RelativityOne, will soon be hosted here in Cape Town, through its relationship with Microsoft Azure cloud hosting.
Being honest I knew about this some time ago as Relativity sought my views and thoughts on the SA market and as I have a very long association with Relativity I was more than happy to assist. The set up in SA was confirmed at the recent Relativity Fest in Chicago and already commented upon in LinkedIn by several people. My understanding is that it may even happen by the end of the year, but if not soon after.
In my 8 years of being here in SA and spreading the word regarding eDiscovery, this is by far the best and most important news to hit us. In the last year RelativityOne has found its way to new MS Azure data centres in UAE, Ireland, France, India and Japan and now here in South Africa. From a personal point of view, I am elated as it feels like a justification for all the effort. It proves the point I have been making regularly about the growth of eDiscovery in SA as Relativity would not make this huge investment without research and due diligence. So, what does it mean for SA, because we know that RelativityOne is available here in SA although hosted outside? Well, I will save some details for a specific later post but one very obvious point surrounds Data Protection and Privacy. How many times, over the years, have I said that eDiscovery and DP go hand in hand? Now, perhaps you see why. If data is hosted here in SA then our corporations and citizens would have no concerns on this important front. Think of our financial institutions, large corporations and SOE’s and their concerns over DP? Yes, in most cases it is OK if data is hosted in a country which has DP as good as or better than SA but there are often sensitivities even about that.
I do not often talk so much about one software but I have been part of the Relativity story for almost 15 years. I met the founder and still CEO, Andrew Sieja in London many years ago. What I saw was a solution which looked OK, but I had already seen a number of solutions come on to the market and disappear quickly or be sold……. and then disappear. What I did see however was a man with a vision and, boy, has he made that vision a reality. As I said it has become, easily, the global market leader, is hosted in more countries than any other, has had many unique development plans (particularly surrounding making it open to allow others to build compatible bolt on features), so many features, the most used software in global cases involving Technology Assisted Review, and then of course the birth of RelativityOne which allows data in a case to be hosted in various workspaces rather than just one (thus saving the client money!!). Now after all these years, it is still here and still top of the tree – an amazing story in the world of technology.
Later, I will write more detail, as mentioned, but I am so pleased to be able to share the news that it will be hosted in SA very, very soon. One final point, I moderated a webinar recently in which a well known SA litigation attorney, a major SA bank and SA’s most experienced service provider all agreed with me that we need our Uniform Rules to change to incorporate eDiscovery. Relativity has now joined that bandwagon by this enormous decision. It seems to me that everyone has faith in SA except our Rules Board