Konzer, Tony. "The Cloud's the Limit With Anything as a Service." Baseline. June 1, 2009.

Last September, Shepherd Data Services, a Minneapolis-based provider of discovery services for law firms, was asked to convert 14GB worth of Lotus Notes data into TIFF files in just four days. It was an imposing task that was critical to a client’s civil litigation case.

Wade Peterson, Shepherd Data’s director of IT, mobilized a few of his staff and used the firm’s internal electronic discovery software to sift through the data. But it soon became apparent that the scope of the project was more than 10 times what was expected—a whopping 160GB comprising 3.2 million pages—and would require 20 people to work on it around the clock.

Earlier in the year, Peterson had signed the company up for a subscription to IPro Tech’s eCapture Web-based discovery software, and he and Christine Chalstrom, Shepherd Data’s founder and president, agreed that this assignment was the perfect test for this service. Peterson and a small team uploaded the data into eCapture, and the software began churning through the data much faster than the in-house system could—and with far fewer employee resources needed. When the deadline arrived four days later, the discovery effort was complete, and the resulting TIFF files could be retrieved online with a simple log-in.

“It felt like a whole data center was at our disposal,” says Chalstrom. “This allows us to send information to the cloud, get it processed and have our customers access it there. Before, we’d get data in, we’d process it, shove it into an external hard drive, take it to our customer’s data center and then upload it there.”

For complete article, see http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/The-Clouds-the-Limit-With-Anything-as-a-Service-761418/

Shepherd Data Services (SDS), a Minnesota-based provider of technology-driven litigation support services, today announced the adoption of Equivio’s technology for near-duplicates and email threads. The Equivio technology will be used to streamline Shepherd's electronic discovery services.

“Our corporate and legal customers depend on us for technology solutions that will expedite their litigation processes, reduce costs and - most importantly – give them the advantage they need to achieve winning results," stated Christine Chalstrom, CEO and President of Shepherd Data Services. "By integrating Equivio's best-of-breed technology as a standard part of our electronic discovery services, we are able to dramatically improve the efficiency and accuracy of the document review process, allowing legal teams to quickly find the data they need.”

In September of 2008, SDS was asked to process a 14GB data store of Lotus Notes files filled with elaborate Excel spreadsheets and lengthy e-mails. The Excel files were intricate and cumbersome, far exceeding what was anticipated. The case involved, a civil litigation procedure, is strictly confidential; however, suffice to say the amount of documentation and discovery was massive and staggering.

Too many pages, too little time
The request for processing was very specific: provide TIFF files with extracted text and metadata in a format compatible with a Summation database. The task seemed simple enough except for the fact that all processing was to be completed in four days, three of which were a holiday weekend. It was daunting at best due to the limited amount of time and large quantity of data.

The project initially began with staff members using the production software that was currently installed at SDS. Soon, it became apparent that the actual amount of data was going to be more than ten times what was expected at approximately 150GB. The increase in the amount of data would now demand the services of at least 20 staff members in order to meet the four day deadline.

Minneapolis, MN – May 23, 2007 – Shepherd Data Services a leading provider of litigation support services, software sales and training, and computer forensics to the Twin Cities legal market, has announced its recent acquisition of Minneapolis-based Marathon Document Services. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The acquisition occurred in December 2006, and the two companies have successfully achieved their operational integration ahead of schedule. The new, combined company has expanded Marathon’s location in the Rand Tower in downtown Minneapolis.