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

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

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