I’ve spent my career in eDiscovery — over two decades at CDS — building operations, structuring deals, and helping our clients navigate whatever comes next. I walk clients through their Relativity costs every day and structure the transitions that get them to RelativityOne. So, when clients tell me they’re worried about costs exploding after migration, I show them why it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Migration Planning Requires a Different Mindset 

eDiscovery is reactive. It’s how many of us are wired. A matter lands, a deadline shifts, scope changes overnight, and you make it work. That’s the job. Migration is different. It rewards discipline. Patience. Pacing. Knowing when to push hard and when to hold steady, when you need all hands on a single step and when to pull back and see the full picture. 

When I engage with a client on RelOne migration, the process starts with me and flows through advisory, planning, implementation, training, and onboarding. 

The first conversation usually covers: How much data is in play? What’s the real activity on your cases, and who specifically needs the new capabilities in RelOne? What can we retire on Server while that environment is still running? What are the budget parameters, and what does the cost model need to look like before stakeholders sign off? 

It’s a lot of back and forth. A lot of openness. That’s on purpose. We’ve transitioned thousands of matters from every kind of legacy environment using this approach; Relativity recognized CDS’ track record with the RelativityOne Data Migration Competency. 

If you’re asking yourself whether you’re too late, ahead of the game, or right on time, the answer depends on where you are and when you start. The planning window is this year. Organizations that use it well will have options. The ones that don’t will be paying for it. 

The Real Cost Conversation 

I’ve seen a terabyte in Server land as 700 gigs in RelativityOne. That 30% drop will flip most people’s back-of-napkin math. Working from the right set of facts is key to having the right conversation about migration. Here are some of the misconceptions I run into most often. 

“My costs are going to explode when I move to the cloud.” 

They don’t have to. Most people assume a terabyte is a terabyte. It’s not. Server is a heavier database. Server charges for indexes, invariant data, and other database elements that don’t carry over the same way in RelOne. Strip those out and your actual data footprint shrinks significantly. 

“RelativityOne is just more expensive.” 

More transparent is more accurate. In RelOne, you see what you’re actually using, maybe for the first time. Data sitting in your active environment after ECA? You’re paying for it. In Server, that cost was bundled into your rate. 

“There’s nothing I can do about the cost increase.” 

There is. An ECA-to-active-review workflow manages what sits in the billable environment. With proper data hygiene in RelOne, your costs can come in similar to what you were paying in Server. What separates a migration that blows the budget from one that holds the line comes down to two things: data hygiene and workflow optimization. Neither is a platform feature. Both require expertise. 

“We need to move everything.” 

That’s the most expensive assumption you can make. It’s like moving houses without deciding what’s worth taking. Everything you bring costs the same to move, whether it’s essential or collecting dust. And in RelOne, those charges keep ticking every month. 

Most organizations have accumulated years of workspaces. In Server, that buildup was invisible. Your costs didn’t change much whether you had 200 active workspaces or 800. In RelativityOne, every gigabyte of active data is a line item. 

The first move isn’t migration. It’s triage. We install Vision AutoArchive directly on a client’s existing Server environment to analyze user activity across the entire portfolio and build a clear picture before anything moves. 

One client came to us with 750 matters. AutoArchive identified over a third as inactive. They were archived, not migrated. The firm’s hosting costs actually decreased after moving to the cloud. 

And that’s not a one-time benefit. We have managed services clients where AutoArchive runs continuously, archiving 5 to 15 terabytes per month. Five figures in savings, every month, ongoing. 

Who You Are Shapes How You Move to RelativityOne 

Every organization brings different constraints, and how you make decisions matters as much as what you’re deciding. 

A law firm managing hundreds of matters across multiple clients needs to coordinate with case teams, make archiving decisions that involve outside stakeholders, and sometimes communicate cost changes to their end clients. The planning is layered. But most firms are already on board with the cloud. 

A corporation with an in-house team and a fixed budget is a different conversation. Tighter constraints, more internal approvals, licensing contracts that dictate transition timing, specific security and compliance requirements that need to be addressed. For organizations already running on M365, data is already in the cloud. RelativityOne’s security posture on Azure is strong. And for clients who need additional layers of compliance, CDS can support that. 

Public sector brings its own dynamics: contract cycles, compliance frameworks, and timelines that don’t flex easily. CDS was the first eDiscovery provider to achieve [FedRAMP Authorization], and that experience informs how we approach security across every engagement. 

The Bottom Line 

If you’ve been doing this work as long as I have, you know the landscape has transformed. Data types and volumes. AI-driven workflows. And who you trust to move your data matters more than ever. The decisions you make now will shape how you operate for years. If you want to understand what your specific migration looks like, what the real numbers are, let’s look at them together.