Enterprise software giant Autonomy today launched a cloud-based e-discovery service designed to enable organisations to collect, store and search electronic data held in its Digital Safe archive.

The Collection to the Cloud offering forms part of the company’s Legal Hold litigation management suite of products, and enables customers to analyse and aggregate relevant data from a range of sources using its meaning-based search engine.

Such sources include laptops, desktops and more than 400 enterprise repositories such as file, email and Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration and document sharing servers, said the vendor.

Forensically-sound copies of relevant information are then transferred to the vendor’s Digital Safe archive for storage purposes. The archive has been given Safe Harbour certification and the supplier currently has datacentres in both the US and UK.

“Regulators’ hard-hitting new rules and hefty sanctions against organisations that do not comply with e-discovery regulations have fuelled demand for legally defensible search, collection and archiving solutions,” said Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s chief executive.

More than 40 new regulations relating to e-discovery have been introduced over the past year, including the UK’s Conduct of Business 11.8 regulations for financial services organisations. The new rules, introduced by the Financial Services Authority in March 2009, require financial firms to record telephone-based communications and retain the recordings for at least six months.

Autonomy claims that its new offering is the first cloud-based service of its kind. In addition, it said that the service automates many formerly inefficient manual processes that have traditionally required significant levels of input from both business staff and the IT department, saving customers both time and money.