Clearwell Now Enabling E-Discovery in Microsoft Cloud

If you’re hiding documents in cloud storage that might be required for a legal case, you’d better find another place to stow them.

Clearwell Systems, which specializes in finding necessary data for litigation and audit purposes, announced this week that the latest version of its e-discovery platform now allows customers to discover information in emails and SharePoint docs from Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.

Using Clearwell’s new software, users can identify and collect data from Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for e-discovery requests in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries and internal investigations.

Once collected, the data collected from the cloud storage is immediately made available for e-discovery phases such as processing, analysis, review and production.

Industry analyst The 451 Group recently reported that the cloud computing marketplace will reach as much as $16.7 billion in revenue by 2013, up from $8.7 billion in 2010. So there’s an amazing amount of potentially important, legally discoverable information socked away up there.

It’s only a matter of time before other companies come out with something like this, so give Mountain View, Calif.-based Clearwell credit for being among the first to offer a product for this purpose.