Realise the benefits – Managing Partner/Finance Director/IT Director/Lawyer

Traditional legal business applications have often been very complicated. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them can be quite daunting and expensive. Law firms often need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.

Legal business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad - the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking forward, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, anytime; especially through mobile devices.

In order to help articulate the benefits of adopting cloud computing and matter management as a service, we have summarised a quick overview below:

Managing Partners/Senior Partner:

·         Create competitive advantage by utilizing the latest productivity applications

·         Build a collaborative and connected enterprise leveraging consumer technology

·         Improve staff morale via investing in the latest tools

·         Maximise business continuity and minimize downtime

·         Establish new lines of business quickly or embrace acquired practices fast

CFO/Finance Directors:

·         Save costs and improve your cash flow management through a subscription model

·         Better manage compliance and risk initiatives

·         Simplify your technology investment, by reducing or potentially removing the need to manage complicated on premise servers and eradicate expensive replacement cycles

IT Directors and Managers:

·         Replace or leverage tired looking, legacy investments

·         Reduce total cost of ownership

·         Introduce exciting productivity apps

·         Integrate complex, disparate systems

·         Ensure systems are compliant and secure

Lawyers:

·         Improve utilisation

·         Increase collaboration with clients

·         Access information effectively whilst on the move

·         Quickly intake new clients whilst managing risk

Want to learn more? Sign up for our Registered Interest Group - http://www.adcoelumtechnology.com/MatterMojo/RIG

Ad Coelum Technology successfully obtains trademark for new matter management software product - MatterMojo®

LONDON, 10 September 2013 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a new legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has successfully trademarked its new matter management product as MatterMojo®.

MatterMojo represents a new era of matter management technology, referred to by Ad Coelum Technology as ‘Matter Management as a Service’. Delivered to law firms through a cloud-based subscription model, the proposition re-defines the way matter management software is deployed and consumed. Switching away from on-premises technology for the core platform drastically reduces deployment and upgrade complexity; allowing the company to focus on delivering new features and bug fixes through a process of continuous delivery. Through this bold step, MatterMojo promises to re-align the matter management experience alongside the world of consumer technology, where a seamless and enjoyable experience across multiple devices has become a normality.

To support the introduction of its early product preview, the company has re-designed its website at www.adcoelumtechnology.com to showcase capabilities. Visitors to the site will also find the newly published ‘MatterMojo Manifesto’, a set of six principles that govern the company’s product/service delivery in the cloud computing era.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Our aim with Matter Management as a Service is to provide a simple, clean and powerful experience that continuously evolves and delights our users, without onerous long term tie in clauses or unnecessary capital expenditure. We encourage users to sign up for our Registered Interest Group (www.adcoelumtechnology.com/mattermojo/rig) to help shape the product vision and we will shortly be launching a video channel to provide mini clips of the technology in action”.

Campaign for Real SaaS - Introducing Matter Management as a Service

Large established legal IT vendors with an on-premises customer base face serious challenges retaining customers as they attempt to move legacy applications to the cloud. But what about new smaller vendors? Vendors who have no legacy and live in a 'cloud-first' world?

Uninhibited by the effects of inertia, they will be the ones to drive innovation and force the big players to change. The implications of the Legal Services Act, combined with the cloud computing era, represents an unprecedented catalyst for innovative new technologies to emerge. But in order to capitalise on this opportunity, smaller vendors must be enablers of change. Leaders of such companies must cast aside the principles and values that once brought them safety inside corporate super tankers of old and make bold new decisions that reflect the agility provided by their new leaner vessels…

How do we get there?

Dealing with the headache of legacy assets, portfolio consolidation attempts and the need to support multiple product versions for many existing customers makes cloud adoption an uphill struggle for incumbent vendors. Smaller vendors on the other hand, find themselves in the luxurious position of being able to make bold decisions that not only drive innovation, but also set a precedent that established vendors must meet in order to survive.

Here's a thought...

The legal industry has become a beacon for innovation and high productivity enabled through a shift from complex, time consuming and costly software projects to a thriving market place for commodity services consumed by law firms in the cloud.

Sounds good? We all want to get there, but we need to accept a few harsh realities first:

• Vendors can't host legacy applications in a data centre and call it 'cloud computing'. True cloud means elasticity, broad network access (e.g. mobile), resource pooling and self-service. See the definition of cloud provided by NIST.
• Law firms can't expect SaaS to deliver savings if they demand an end-to-end environment all to themselves. Multi-tenancy is the key to significant cost savings. Law firms and vendors must work together to analyse data storage and processing at a more granular level to identify candidates for cloud resource pooling.
• Data is not necessarily safer in the law firm than in the cloud. How 'safe' is a law firms on-premises infrastructure compared to the multi-billion dollar cloud data centres operated by the likes of Microsoft and Amazon? Security is multi-faceted – people, hardware, networks, buildings. Very few firms can compete on all these levels and should they even try when it is not their core business?
• Diehards should not stifle innovation. If mid/large law firms continue to insist that the PMS system must remain on-premises this should not hinder adoption of cloud elsewhere. Enhanced connectivity scenarios and higher user volumes make front-office systems perfect candidates for migration to the cloud. It shouldn’t be all or nothing.

The clue is in the name

When you hear the term Software as a Service or SaaS, what do you think? Most people concentrate on the hosting aspect as being the 'service'. To drive SaaS adoption in mid/large law firms, we must concentrate on how SaaS improves the lives of end-users not just IT professionals. 

Ultimately it is the software and the way functionality is consumed by users that should constitute the service. With that in mind, I propose the following new principles for vendors of modern legal SaaS offerings:

• Don't sell a product, sell a service. Better still… an experience.
• There is no such thing as a version - all customers are on the same version... the current version.
• Allow services to evolve continuously in direct response to customer feedback. 
• Allow new features to be configured so users can manage how and when they receive them.
• Identity components fit for multi-tenancy to maximise resource pooling. 

So what does this all mean? It means we are on the verge of a new era of legal technology, where the end user is in much closer contact with the vendor.

Introducing Matter Management as a Service from Ad Coelum Technology

Users of our cloud-based Matter Management solution will experience something drastically different. They will consume Matter Management as a Service:

• Continuous delivery of new functionality. Why should users wait months or even years for essential matter management features? We keep users productive and competitive by ensuring our service accurately reflects the current needs of the legal profession. No scary big bang upgrades. Continuous smooth evolution where the user remains in control.
• Users own the roadmap. We will use technologies such as UserVoice to manage feedback from within the service itself, allowing users to suggest new functionality and/or vote for functionality proposed by others.
• Same day bug fixes. If an issue is identified with our service, all users receive the resolution as soon as a fix has been identified and deployed. Because everyone is using the same service, many users will not even notice the issue existed.
• No long-term tie in. We must all learn to live and die by the quality of service we deliver. The days of large capital-led deals are over. Need some service guarantees for a period of time? No problem – let’s talk, but we won’t lock anyone down who desires the freedom to switch off at will.

A law firm’s matter management needs, addressed through a single service. That's what real SaaS is all about. 

Paul Payne, CTO
@paulpayne1

Continuous Delivery - iteration and the importance of early feedback

A month has passed since I joined Ad Coelum Technology and it's been great to sit down with law firms and discuss the merits (and challenges) of cloud computing. One thing we have covered at length is the notion of continuous delivery and the opportunity it presents for delivering a significantly better experience to customers.

To help explain why I will be making continuous delivery a key aspect of our cloud-based Matter Management service, but let's quickly change gears and talk about...cars.

The car in front is a Toyota (but why?)

In the 1950's, American quality guru W. Edwards Deming set out to help Japan rebuild its manufacturing industry in the wake of the second world war. His 'Plan-Do-Check-Act' philosophy centered around the notion of continuous iteration and the importance of early feedback in the engineering process. This agility gave Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota a distinct quality edge over the traditional production processes of western counterparts, allowing them to dominate manufacturing through the late 70's and 80's.

This is the single most important lesson we can learn when it comes to quality and engineering.

In 1991 James P. Womack coined a new term for this approach following a $5m study of Toyota. He called it 'Lean'.

The software industry, perhaps distracted by the looming millennium bug, took a further decade to catch on...

'Agile' - easy to say, hard to do

The Agile Manifesto (2001) marked a turning point in software development and a much needed departure away from waterfall as the dominant approach. We have since attempted to apply all the great lessons of Japanese car building to software development. KANBAN, Kaizan, Just-In-Time - you name it, we found a home for it, most recently under the banner of 'Lean Software Development'.

The problem however, is that all too often we still revert to waterfall because it feels easier and safer. It is almost always the path of least resistance - exec sponsors feel safer because they can see a well defined plan and manage through conformance to it. Customers can't object to the requirements or design because they aren't involved, and reputations can't be damaged because no early software is released for feedback.

Fortunately, opportunities to revert to type are being eroded by the nature of cloud-computing.

Continuous delivery, enabled by the cloud

At Ad Coelum Technology we have the luxury of no legacy software, no existing processes and no existing culture. This represents the perfect opportunity to adopt continuous delivery from the get go. Building on a cloud PaaS like Windows Azure means that the deployment issues surrounding on-premises deployments are a thing of the past:

If we fix a bug, ALL customers benefit from that fix as soon as it is deployed to the cloud. In most cases, a vast percentage of users will not even notice/be impacted by the change.

If we add a new feature ALL customers can make use of it as soon as it is deployed to the cloud. We will also offer customers/users the choice of how they adopt major new features:

• Early adopter? Great! You can use preview versions of the feature as soon as it is deployed and help us to improve functionality through continuous delivery and feedback.
• More conservative? No problem. You will only receive the feature once it has been fully tried and tested

I'm not about to commit to any kind of release cadence at this stage, but every 3-4 weeks for new features is where we need to be to ensure our development efforts are fully aligned with the needs of our customers.

Make no mistake - putting continuous delivery at the heart of our philosophy will bring a whole new set of pressures and challenges. It requires a development operations rethink that will push the quality bar to new levels and inject much needed intensity and pressure into the development process.

But these are good pressures and exciting challenges. Continuous delivery has started...

Paul Payne, CTO.
@paulpayne1
 

Ad Coelum Technology announces new Board appointments…

 LONDON, 3 June 2013 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumlegaltech.com), a new legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced new appointments to its Board of Directors.

Paul Payne joins as CTO. Prior to joining Ad Coelum Technology, Paul held the position of product development manager, leading large teams to success on LexisNexis UK’s most strategic software development projects. Paul’s management and leadership experience is backed by a decade of technical experience in roles ranging from Analyst/Programmer to Enterprise Architect, specialising in Microsoft technologies. Having designed, engineered and managed products across the full legal software spectrum (Matter/Case – Visualfiles, PMS, CRM and DMS), Paul has both breadth and depth of legal IT knowledge. He holds an MBA with distinction from Leeds University Business School and a first class honours degree in Information Systems.

Phil Whitehead joins as a Non-Executive Director. Phil is the founder and CEO of Jambu Legal; a consultancy that helps law firms maximise profitability by streamlining processes and highlighting business efficiencies. Prior to Jambu, Phil has headed up the IT function for 3 of the top 100 UK law firms - DWF, Hugh James and Shakespeares and in his time has implemented all of the major systems that enable a law firm to operate in a highly efficient and profitable manner. Phil’s experience includes turning around underperforming business processes by working closely and collaboratively with the teams that ultimately benefit from his decade in legal IT.

Darren Atkinson joins as Non-Executive Director. In additional to Ad Coelum Technology, Darren is a serving executive team member at Prisymid Limited helping expand operations on a global basis in a market leading label lifecycle management solution provider to the Life Sciences Industry. Prior to Prisymid, Darren served as CTO at FormScape Software Limited and provided technical and strategic leadership to the group through a market driven product expansion that including raising funding from Venture Partners in Europe and the US. Darren has held a number of directorships in software businesses across UK & Europe, US and South Africa over his career, many of which have delivered solutions into highly regulated sectors requiring sophisticated version control, auditing, workflow and secure document process automation.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “I’m delighted to start building out a highly skilled and complementary team that will be responsible for delivering an exciting new proposition that will change the case & matter management landscape offering easier collaboration with clients, reduced maintenance costs and enhanced mobile and device access.”

Over the coming weeks, the company will be showcasing its new product capability out in the market.

Cloud computing for lawyers not dummies! Part Four - Security and Privacy

In our last blog, we explored cloud economics. In this piece, we will discuss the important topics of security and privacy in relation to the cloud and more specially Microsoft Windows Azure (the cloud platform that underpins our matter management application).

We value the privacy and security of your data and they remain amongst our top concerns. Much has been written about these topics in recent times and in this instance we'll focus our attention on the benefits of Microsoft's Trust Centre http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust-center/

Security

Windows Azure runs in data centers managed and operated by Microsoft Global Foundation Services (GFS). These geographically dispersed data centers comply with key industry standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2005, for security and reliability. They are managed, monitored, and administered by Microsoft operations staff that have years of experience in delivering the world’s largest online services with 24 x 7 continuity.

Privacy

The Windows Azure Privacy Statement describes the specific privacy policy and practices that govern customers’ use of Windows Azure.

The Windows Azure privacy statement states that Microsoft will not disclose customer data, administrator data, payment data or support data outside of Microsoft or its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates except as directed by a customer or described in the privacy statement. The key aspect of the privacy statement regarding customer data is set out as follows:

Microsoft will not disclose Customer Data to a third party (including law enforcement, other government entity, or civil litigant; excluding our subcontractors) except as you direct or unless required by law. Should a third party contact us with a demand for Customer Data, we will attempt to redirect the third party to request it directly from you. As part of that, we may provide your basic contact information to the third party. If compelled to disclose Customer Data to a third party, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to notify you in advance of a disclosure unless legally prohibited.

Microsoft complies with the E.U. Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) which sets a baseline for handling personal data in the European Union.  The E.U. has stricter privacy rules than the U.S. and most other countries. 

Microsoft operates Windows Azure data centres around the world. Customers may specify the geographic regions where their data will be stored. Available regions are shown below.

 

Ad Coelum Technology will store data in the customer's home region. For customers in the UK, this will be Ireland, however Microsoft will also replicate data across sub-regions (Netherlands) for enhanced data durability in case of a major data centre outage.

We're working with a first class, secure cloud platform to bring peace of mind to law firms and their clients.

Cloud computing for lawyers not dummies! Part Three - Economics

In our last article we covered cloud service and deployment models. In this piece, we will focus on the reasons for adopting cloud and some of the economic arguments underlying the technology choice.

A recent Legal IT survey conducted in conjunction with InPractice www.inpractice.co.uk highlighted some great reasons for cloud adoption.



Benefits of cloud adoption

Cost was the number one driver followed by client collaboration and mobile access. So does cloud really drive down ownership costs? Let's explore some of the financial benefits of cloud adoption...

CapEx - certainly you can expect a significant reduction in Capex (aside from portal connection fees) as dependency on "owned" (read "up front cost") servers reduces or disappears based upon whether the IT infrastructure resides partially or wholly elsewhere.

Hardware - Can be more fully utilised, smoothing out demand and leveraging economies of scale from your chosen cloud provider.

Power - Less hardware onsite equals less power consumed. Save energy and you'll be greener too!

Resilience - Typical clouds have several locations for their data centers, and they mirror your data and applications across at least two of them. You don't have to provision for duplicate hardware in case of failure/outage.

Staffing costs - although a somewhat taboo subject, cloud computing does reduce the need for on-premise staff or more positively allows sensible redeployment of the in-house IT resource pool.

So what's the bottom line? Industry analysts predict a cost saving somewhere between 20-30% when cloud is fully embraced.

Moving away from legacy technology and the cost argument, we believe that the real benefits come in the form of improved collaboration for lawyers and their clients. A cloud based portal approach opens up the possibility to communicate seamlessly from mobile, tablet and desktop. Combine this with a more compelling user interface and everybody wins with an enjoyable experience.

In summary, competitive advantage can be gained by adopting Ad Coelum Technology:

• Reducing total cost of ownership through a cloud subscription pricing model
• Strong integration with legacy on-premise solutions and Microsoft applications such as Office and SharePoint
• Vastly improved connectivity for mobile scenarios, incorporating social media features and enhanced collaboration with clients

Cloud computing for lawyers, not dummies! Part Two!

In our first article on cloud computing, we settled on "the cloud is the internet as a business or consumer platform". Of course, the cloud can be deployed in a number of ways and in this blog we will walk you through the different types of cloud service and deployment models.

Several good descriptions of cloud technology exist but we found this one by the American National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) very useful. You can read it here in this concise 3 page pdf.

Service Models

Firstly, let's talk about service models. Service models refer to the capabilities of a cloud service. The three most common are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

• SaaS: The ability to use a software package deployed by the service provider. Think Gmail!
• PaaS: A development platform hosted by the service provider to facilitate rapid design, testing, and deployment of new applications. Think Azure! Please find a neat video here
• IaaS: Can be viewed as the opposite of SaaS, whereby the service provider only delivers hardware resources (network, compute, storage) required to run a customer’s operating systems and applications. Think Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud!

Deployment Models

Secondly, let's discuss deployment models. Deployment models refer to the way in which the service is provisioned. There are 4 primary cloud deployment models - Private, Community, Public and Hybrid. 

• Private: The service is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organisation
• Community: The service is provisioned for exclusive use by a community of organisations
• Public: The service is provisioned for open use by the general public
• Hybrid: A mix of two or more private, community and public clouds

 

Ad Coelum Technology Models

So, what models do we intend to use to deliver our innovative cloud platform to forward thinking law firms?

In terms of our service model, we intend to begin with SaaS, making it easy for our customers to start using our software and allowing us to ensure that their experience is fully managed. As our platform evolves we also fully intend to leverage PaaS, exposing more and more of the platform to our customers, especially our integration engine powered by Windows Azure Service Bus technology.

From a deployment perspective, our solutions will be provisioned as a private cloud on a single-tenant basis, ensuring customer data remains secure and completely separate. This model also enables upgrades to solutions to be managed on a per-customer basis.

We have selected the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud to help us realise our vision to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile and social technology to provide a rich and compelling user experience. Below are just a handful of the fantastic benefits we and our customers will enjoy from a cloud platform like Windows Azure:

• Global footprint - Azure data centres provide a truly global cloud network
• High availability - 99.9% or higher SLA across all Azure services
• Only pay for what you use - resources are only billed when in use
• Ability to scale-out - hardware procurement becomes a thing of the past!

We're all in it together...

As an innovative new cloud technology company, we will also be practicing what we preach! Below are just a few of the many cloud technologies we will be using to run our business:

• Windows Azure for internal applications and of course, our legal software!
• Office 365 for content management, email and other forms of communication
• Dynamics CRM Online for business development
• Team Foundation Service for managing our cloud software development lifecycle

So there you have it. As we develop our business, we will experience the advantages and opportunities of cloud computing right along-side our customers. After all we can't promote the cloud as a means of business advantage if we don't live it and breath it ourselves!

Law Firms - Matter Management vs. Case Management – a Continuum?

Modern lawyers still spend an unwarranted amount of time looking for information and attending to administrative tasks. And, if the old adage is true that time really is money, lawyers should be embracing ways to lessen the amount of unproductive time they devote to such details. Technology is one way forward and case & matter management software has undoubtedly improved front-office productivity over the last two decades.

You often hear folks refer to case management software when they are really talking about matter management software. Are they really that dissimilar? The pertinent answer is yes and no!

In reality, matter management is more akin to low volume, high value case management as opposed to high volume, low value work normally associated with traditional case management. It can actually be viewed as a continuum in today’s world with systems growing from one end of the spectrum i.e. value to embrace volume as a firm rolls-out and supports its relevant practice areas. 
 

Matter management systems are valuable assets and often deployed in a more pervasive manner than large-scale volume case management systems. A matter management system affords you the ability to run thorough conflict checks across all of a law firm's current matters for ethical and business conflicts of interest before a matter is ever opened. Anti-money laundering checks can be made to check that your customers are who they say they are. The system permits you to open a client/matter number or billing number and assign the lawyers and other timekeepers to the particular case in question. A matter management system may well have more rigid controls so data that could potentially affect the matter's specifics, such as name, fee rates and unique billing number, cannot be altered. In addition, embedded time recording functionality is an increasingly common feature of matter management systems. This allows users to track the time associated with a specific matter and pass it directly into the PMS for a billing cycle.

We may take the above for granted but Cloud-based matter management can also be brought to bear in a number of other important activities:

• It provides a perfect opportunity to create one version of the truth when firms merge and/or systems are consolidated
• New lines of business can be quickly set up and powered by new technology unimpeded by legacy systems
• High value practice areas can be become more automated through modern workflow technology

Food for thought? At the end of the day, we think matter management is akin to high value case management and case management per se is the volume end of the business! But to really leverage the power of this software, we believe the cloud is the answer! Our Matter Management offering powered by Windows Azure will reduce maintenance and other infrastructure costs, improve collaboration between lawyers and their clients and bring about a revolution in mobile device access that will see productivity rise to new levels – critical to success in an increasingly competitive legal market.

Who is looking? Our analytics data...revealed!

Following the launch of the Ad Coelum Legal Technology website at the beginning of March, we have been monitoring usage through Google Analytics. This is standard practice and helps us to optimise the site in order to provide a better experience to our visitors.

What is not standard, is to publish this information to the outside world...we have very high standards...but we are not a standard company. To thank our initial visitors, we would like to give something back by sharing a few stats - after all, they are about you!

The following information has been taken from our first month of trading. Although this only accounts for a small time window, it does provide a fresh up-to-date snapshot of the devices and technologies we, the legal technology industry, are using right now - we hope you find it useful...

Mobility - Apple rules

Visitors using mobile devices

The number of visitors using a smartphone or tablet was relatively low at 12% demonstrating that laptops and desktops are by the far the most popular devices used to access a legal technology website. Unsurprisingly, 90% of the mobile visitors were using Apple devices.

Operating System - Microsoft still dominant

Operating system used

On the operating system front, Apple have added a further 18% of visitors on top of their iOS devices through OSX machines such as MacBook and iMac. This still leaves Microsoft with a hefty 71% share of the overall OS usage (including 1% from Windows Phone). A very different story than a decade ago, but Windows is still the dominant force by far.

Browser - Google makes waves, Firefox reduced to ripples

Web browser used

We found this one quite surprising. Internet Explorer was still used by almost half our visitors. Chrome stole 16.6% leaving  Firefox with only 6%. 'Others' included IE with Chrome Frame, Android Browser and Opera Mini. There is little doubt that Internet Explorer is making significant progress with each release (and the barrage of TV advertising can't have hurt either), but we will be watching with great interest to see if Chrome and Safari eat their way into that 51.2%.

A final thought

As we build out our Windows Azure-based platform, we remain very open minded about the types of devices our end users will use to connect to our applications and services. The one thing we are certain about, is that the end-user experience needs to improve in legal technology. Fortunately for us as the new kids on the block, our cutting edge cloud architecture and standards driven REST API's will allow us to lead the way, no matter which devices become dominant among tomorrows lawyers.

Ad Coelum Technology selects Windows Azure Active Directory

As a cloud solution provider, Ad Coelum Technology is committed to embracing the very latest security protocols and technologies to ensure end users receive a secure, yet non-pervasive authentication experience. We will be working closely with Microsoft to ensure that our Azure-based solutions are compatible with all key Microsoft cloud offerings (such as Office 365, Lync, SharePoint, Windows Live, SkyDrive etc.) as well as other key technology platforms such as iOS and Android on the client-side.

In order to achieve this goal, we will be using an approach known as claims-based authentication, whereby the identity of a particular user is verified by a claims provider known as a secure token service (STS). Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) provides a powerful STS known as Access Control Services (ACS) which can be used in conjunction with both cloud identity providers (e.g. Google, Facebook, Windows Live ID and Yahoo) and critically - corporate active directories. Using a synchronisation mechanism between traditional on-premise Windows Server AD and Windows Azure AD in the cloud, existing investment in on-premise security infrastructure can be leveraged for hybrid and cloud-based scenarios.

Claims Based Authentication with Windows Azure Active Directory

The ability to manage the identity of our clients, their customers and their partners through an STS capable of managing many different identity providers is a very powerful proposition. This approach makes collaboration with a wide variety of internal and external users much simpler at the solution architecture level. Let's go through the above diagram step-by-step to discuss how claims-based authentication works in practice...

1. An end user requests a resource (i.e. a browser page request, web service request etc.) from our matter management solution running in Windows Azure.
2. As the user is not yet authenticated, they are redirected to Windows Azure AD which has been configured as the STS for the solution. The user is presented with a list of potential identity providers which are offered by the STS in relation to our solution
3. If the end user is external to the firm they may well be selecting a consumer identity provider such as Google or Windows Live. For internal users this is more likely to be active directory. Note: In both cases the user would need to have previously registered with the matter management solution (either through automatic active directory synchronisation, or in the case of an external user, an approval process to link their identity claim to a contact within the matter management solution). This has been omitted from the diagram which illustrates the authentication process only, not initial registration.
4. The user enters their credentials into the selected IP login page and a security token is issued if authentication is successful.
5. The IP redirects the user back to Windows Azure AD along with the security token.
6. Windows Azure AD validates the security token and runs it through a rules engine managed by Windows Azure Access Control Services (ACS). This engine transforms the output claims into the format expected by our solution.
7. ACS then redirects the user to our application where the ACS token is used to validate the users identity on all subsequent requests (until the token expires).

Although this seven step process may sound convoluted, steps 2 through 6 have not even touched our matter management solution. The user has also only seen two screens, one to select an IP, another to enter their login details.

In effect, we as an Independent Software Vendor, have outsourced the authentication process.  By adopting Windows Azure AD as our trusted provider we will be dramatically reducing the amount of custom authentication logic within our solutions, which allows us to reduce risk from a non-functional perspective and focus more time and resources on delivering functional requirements. That's not to say we are being complacent when it comes to security. As a cloud provider we make security our number one concern and by choosing Windows Azure AD/ACS we are able to leverage a powerful, secure, standards-based solution backed by the investment and support of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Our mission is to make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. The decision to adopt claims-based authentication and Windows Azure AD enables a less obstructive authentication experience using reusable tokens which can be shared by different solutions to reduce user disruption.

Windows Azure Active Directory is currently at the developer preview stage and we will be working alongside Microsoft to incorporate this ground breaking new technology into our solutions over the coming months.

Cloud computing for lawyers, not dummies!

Some folks think cloud computing should be named cloudy computing, because it is precipitous, vague, messy, hazy and unpredictable ;-)

The term "cloud computing" seems to encompass everything - including the kitchen sink!

However, the cloud is with us and here to stay!

Traditional legal business applications have often been very complicated. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them can be quite daunting and expensive. Law firms often need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.

Legal business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad - the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking forward, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, anytime; especially through mobile devices.

Many companies have adopted the cloud to save money. Some say it can be safer, as it’s harder to lose data in a cloud (for example, if a company’s computers are destroyed in a fire, its cloud-based information will still exist). Large cloud providers have multiple backups/fail-safe provisions.

So what is the cloud really? “A computer network to store, access and share data from Internet-connected devices?”

And what about cloud computing then? “The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server?”.

Still confused? In the end, we like "the cloud is the internet as a business or consumer platform".

Simple!

Ad Coelum Technology joins Microsoft BizSpark startup scheme

We are happy to announce that Ad Coelum Technology Limited has been accepted into the Microsoft BizSpark startup program. The BizSpark program provides technology, support, visibility and community to promising startups and entrepreneurs across the world. To find out more about BizSpark, click here.

Microsoft BizSpark Website

The BizSpark program provides us access to a vast range of Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server and Windows Azure, all of which make up the backbone of our technology platform. We are really looking forward to working with Microsoft as part of this scheme and aim to become a prominent member of the Bizspark community over the coming months as we build out our legal industry solutions.