While I was perusing through the normal slew of “Best of 2009″ and “What to Look For in 2010″ articles on everything from music and movies to technology , I came across an interesting article on CNET’s “the Wisdom of Clouds” section.  An article called “Seven businesses to look out for in 2010″.  It is not surprising that 5 of the 7 businesses are related to Software as a Service (SaaS) or the idea that one or more of your applications and the data contained in them are hosted by a service provider.  SaaS can be ”cloud” based services but do not have to be. They can be simply hosted on servers that your provider owns. For the most part, if your data is moving from Point A to Point B,  it does not get too muddy.

However, the most traditional definitions of cloud computing rely on virtual servers with processing capacity and storage that can immediately scale based on demand and accessed via internet protocol (IP).  That may be where the opportunity lies for those that wish to become educated on it and build the skills to litigate on it or exploit those you have already obtained. Virtual servers. Who has jurisdiction in the town of “Virtual” anyway?

The #4 business to look out for in the previously mentioned article is (Cloud) Customer litigation practice.  As more and more applications and subsequently, data begins to become ones and zeroes in constant motion from one virtual server to the next, buyers of these service will want to guarantee protection of that data and limit where and what can be done with it.  But are they? This lies within the contracts that they have with the providers of these services.

It is all about the data.  Who owns it? Who can access it? Does it matter if it crosses state lines or moves internationally? I once had a Native American casino as a client who could not build or use a disaster recovery facility that allowed their data to leave tribal lands. The tribal leaders feared it would then be subject to federal communications laws.  Whether this was the case or not, nobody really knew.  Opportunity?

Most articles and blog posts on this topic in the legal technology realm tend to be based on whether or not YOU should be moving towards this model in your own office.  This will be hotly debated between now and 10 years from now when it is all but forced on you.  However, that is irrelevant to this subject.

The fact is that you may have potential clients that are already signing up for these services and have simply clicked on a box on a license agreement that they did not read.  They have brought other agreements to you to look over to make sure they were not signing away any rights. Why not these? It is just a gray box they have to click and the service is month to month and they can cancel anytime, so it is basically harmless. Right?