In mergers and acquisitions, the traditional data room will genuinely be a physically secured and continually monitored room, normally in the vendor's offices (or those of their lawyers), which the bidders and their advisers will visit in order to inspect and report on the various documents and other data made available.
Such teams often comprise a number of experts in different fields and so the overall cost of keeping such groups on call near to the data room is often extremely high.
With annual growth of about 16% over seven years the virtual data room market forecast is $1.6 Billion.[7][8][when?]
Detailed auditing must be provided for legal reasons so that a record is kept of who has seen which version of each document.
Data rooms are commonly used by legal, accounting, investment banking and private equity companies performing mergers and acquisitions, fundraising especially with startups,[9] insolvency, corporate restructuring, and joint ventures including biotechnology and tender processes.