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In the September/October 2011issue of The Pennsylvania Lawyer, published by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, practicing attorney and technology consultant, Shannon Brown, provides a very thoughtful and informative primer on the “why’s and wherefores” of cloud computing. His article offers some important background for attorneys attempting to understand the “alphabet soup” of current cloud computing terminology.
He also outlines why it is important for attorneys to understand some of the risks associated with cloud computing, and how to mitigate those risks to insure compliance with various judicial opinions on the topic. Specifically, he cites Ethics Informal Opinion (2010-060, 1/10/2011) of the PA Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which states that attorneys may ethically allow client confidential material to be stored ‘in the cloud’ “… provided the attorney makes reasonable efforts to assure that the material is confidential.”
As Brown states, any attorney contemplating a cloud-based storage solution will need to understand what constitutes “reasonable efforts” regarding the confidentiality of data stored. To help with this determination, the author suggests three areas for attorneys to probe carefully before committing to the cloud. They are:
- Data encryption practices adopted by the vendor
- Awareness of the physical storage location of the data itself
- Procedures for disaster recovery of data made available by the vendor
NetDocuments appears to do rather well in all three of these crucial categories.
All documents sent to and from NetDocuments use secure SSL protocols with 128 bit encryption keys, and all documents stored on the NetDocuments servers are fully encrypted. Multiple additional technical and procedural safeguards are in place to insure that your documents are available only to you and to those with whom you choose to share them.
NetDocuments servers are located exclusively in the U.S. for U.S. firms, as well as two redundant datacenters in the UK. All data becomes replicated between the two secure hosting centers, insuring continuity of access. In the event of a disaster at one site, access to the replicated site is instantaneous and transparent to the user. You can read the details for yourself in the NetDocuments Technical Overview.
So, all of you Pennsylvania lawyers out there, rest easy knowing that NetDocuments fully complies with the standards as currently defined by your Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and as further explicated by a practicing attorney who is also a knowledgeable technology professional.
The cloud can indeed be a dangerous place. Perform your due diligence accordingly.
Post written by Jack Schaller of Eastern Legal Systems (ELS). ELS is one of NetDocuments valued Business Services Partners. Jack is a partner and Director of Client Development and operates out of the firm’s Blue Bell, PA office.
Eastern Legal Systems LLC is a regional technology consulting firm specializing in legal billing and accounting, practice management, document management, and network optimization for small to mid-size law firms. Spanning the “Metroliner Corridor” of the Eastern United States seaboard, Eastern Legal Systems serves clients in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. from offices in those four locations.
Our mission is to add value to each project we initiate for our law firm clients, through our combination of extensive software and training experience, our deep knowledge of the products we support, and our solid legal industry background.
October 5th, 2011
Tags: Attorney, Cloud Computing, Content Management, document management, law firm, Legal Administrators, Legal SaaS, legal technology, LegalTech, Security, Technology|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, Compliance, document management, Ethics, legal, Legal Ethics, legal technology, SaaS, Technology
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Nothing in life is certain, except death, taxes, and the T3 Technology Conference being the the go-to spot for financial services technology.
David Drucker and Joel Bruckenstein are the brainchildren behind the T3 conference and will be taking their talents to Weston, FL for the 2011 event being held February 16-19. This is the sixth year that the duo has been running the conference and they are extremely excited to see what new innovations will be discussed during this year’s show.
“We are introducing several new and exciting sessions that reflect changes in the marketplace,” Drucker said in an interview on MSNBC. T3 recently announced the topics that will be covered which include social document management, cloud computing and mobile technology.
Your Perspective
Kristin Luke, owner of Wealth Management Marketing, has been attending T3 for a number of years and understands the value it adds to an advisor’s practice.
“T3 is one of the most valuable practice management focused conferences I’ve attended. The conference schedule allows ample time to network with colleagues and vendors in order to share experiences and best practices, while providing a diverse range of technology focused educational sessions. I highly recommend that any advisor who is considering integrating new technology into his or her business attend T3. Not only will it spark new ideas, but it will save you hours of research required to obtain this same information otherwise.”
Socialicious
Sharing and connecting on social media has become an integral part of any large gathering, and it will be no different at T3. The first place to go for all T3 related news is the conference blog. There are also numerous Twitter handles that are must follows including Joel Bruckenstein, David Drucker and T3Fan. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #T32011.
Tools for Today
Attending T3 is like grabbing a chip from your friend’s nachos and three other chips are stuck to it. No, you’re not abusing your friends kindness, just getting an unexpected freebie. With so much knowledge being shared at T3, attendees will surely get more than they bargained for. Here are a few of the can’t miss sessions:
What’s New in Document Management Software – We’re obviously interested in this panel discussion on Friday at 12:45pm.
Cloud Computing – Another very close to home topic. This session will be lead by Joel Bruckenstein on Saturday at 2:15pm.
Cloud Lounge
NetDocuments is a sponsor of the show and once again we will be bringing the Cloud Lounge to T3. The Cloud Lounge can be found at booth #213 where Marc Duncan, Marriott Murdock and the NetDocuments team will be posted up.
“I love the T3 show as it gives me a great opportunity to interact face to face with all of our wonderful customers and partners.” Marc said. “I also love to introduce the incredible power of NetDocuments to a whole new set of financial services professionals…..can’t wait!”
You may not attend technology conferences very often, but when you do, I’d suggest T3.
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments marketing team
January 21st, 2011
Tags: Cloud Computing, Florida, Investment Advisor, joel bruckenstein, Lebron James, MSNB, SaaS, Wealth management|
Category: Cloud Computing, Compliance, document, document management, Email Management, Financial Services Technology, Registered Investment Advisors, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology, Trade Show
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The All New NetDocuments – Rich Functionality. Enhanced Design.
In the spring of 2011, NetDocuments users will get a new user experience. Without sacrificing any of our industry leading functionality and reliability, we have redesigned the user interface to improve navigation and simplify the management of documents in the cloud.
The Makeover Process
This is the most significant update in the 12 years since NetDocuments opened it’s doors and paved the SaaS document management highway. “We pulled together a highly qualified team of experts to enhance the NetDocuments user interface and to address areas that would greatly improve the user experience, while at the same time creating an attractive design that is more pleasurable to use. By using familiar design patterns and a more structured framework, the interface should require less investment in setup and also be easier to gain proficiency,” said VP of Marketing, Leonard Johnson.
[Click the image below to see more screen shots]
Cloud Content Management
To learn more, check out our video and slideshow full of screenshots. These contain all the information you need to quench your desire to know everything there is about the new design. We’d love to hear your feedback and questions regarding the user experience of NetDocuments on Twitter at @netdocuments. You can also drop an email to sales@netdocuments.com
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Marketing Team. He can be reached on Twitter at @dannymjohnson.
November 23rd, 2010
Tags: Cloud Computing, Content Management, document management, legal technology, NetDocuments, SaaS, SaaS Document Management, User Interface|
Category: Cloud Computing, collaboration, customer service, document management, Financial Services Technology, legal technology, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology
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Earlier we posted part I of this two part Q&A with legal technology veteran Tom Lee where we discussed the history and future of document management and he ended byjoking that I was giving him too many difficult questions. So in part II I lightened things up a bit but still managed to slip in some tough questions.
Q: OK Tom, a bit of light relief now, what Football Team do you support?
Tom: CHELSEA FC – I have been a Chelsea fan since I was eight years old.
My Grandfather, Father and several of my uncles were regulars to Upton Park to watch home matches at West Ham United. This was in the heady days of Geoff Hurst, Johnny Sissons, Martin Peters and of course, the great Bobby Moore. Come to think of it, almost everyone in my family supported West Ham United as most lived within walking distance of the ground.
The first game I remember seeing was West Ham v Burnley which I didn’t like very much. However, the second was West Ham v Chelsea and right there, the bug bit! I was never a regular supporter i.e. watch every game, I was more a follower because at 3.00pm every Saturday I was playing also.
Believe it or not, I still play a bit for Marbella Vets and I am quite proud to say, I am still one of their younger players. Although, these days it takes me about fifteen minutes to warm up, I play for around twenty minutes, my knees give way, and it’s straight to the shower!
Q: How have UK firms reacted to the idea of SaaS and cloud computing?
Tom: If you had asked me that question just eighteen months ago my answer would have been radically different. However, with the advent of BT’s 21CN backbone giving far greater bandwidth and QoS to business this undoubtedly has increased the uptake of software being provided to the desktop as a service.
I think that UK firms are beginning to adopt the SaaS model for a number of very good reasons. Firstly, over the past year or so, we have witnessed smaller companies from a plethora of industries embrace the cloud model. Indeed, we have quite a number of clients that are totally in the cloud i.e. they don’t even have a Network Server! All software is delivered as a service from within the cloud. I can also include my company, Quintec International where we run our CRM, Accounting, Document Management, Email, Telephony and Time Recording software, all in the cloud!
More recently, the adoption of SaaS for larger companies has been quite phenomenal compared with just a year ago when the take-up could only be described as sluggish! I can honestly say that I have only witnessed one such radical transformation in I.T. which compares with the move towards SaaS. This was back in the 1978/9 when almost every company moved away from the Mainframe environment onto semi intelligent distributive processing by adopting the WANG range of mini computers, among others! I think we are witnessing a similar event here – it’s a mass migration, and just like the events of the late seventies, definitely one for the history books!
Of course, people out there would expect me to say that Cloud is the best thing since sliced bread, as I am in the business of providing Cloud based services and software! OK, my comments may drum up a little business but I don’t think so! This is far more reaching than that, I don’t know of a single I.T. Director or Head of I.T. who is not planning to a move to the cloud in some way shape or form over the next year!
I can still see large companies maintaining some of their legacy back-office systems such as accounting, practice management and you could throw Human Resources into that for the next few years but for front-end processing where your users have to work in a multitude of environments, there use of CRM, document management, document production & manipulation these seem to be moving faster than I had anticipated.
I have to add at this juncture that there is a vast reduction in the cost of ownership for SaaS adopters. We have recently carried out analysis at several large companies where we halved the cost of ownership over conventional software. These savings are further reduced when you include the cost of both Disaster Recovery and Online Backup; the additional savings in this area are considerable!
Q: If you were to start a law firm today, what technology would you start with?
Tom: Put simply, I would never start a law firm! Far too complicated for me!
We started our company with the idea that we will never own a Network server. Quintec International is now totally in the cloud and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I must confess the day we moved into our new offices a little over a year ago I was still a little skeptical because I had used client/server technology for so long and had relied on it, I was comfortable!
After one year, I can say that I have had no down-time whatsoever and the services delivered over the internet are fast, intuitive, and I can work from anywhere in the world, and believe me, I have found myself in some rather unusual places. I even work from my place in Spain way up in the mountains where the internet service is notoriously bad. I also work on my documents on the train up to London on my iPhone so I don’t have to lug a heavy laptop around town.
Besides, if our guys are recommending our software products to clients surely they need to be using it themselves… don’t they?
So my answer to your question, if I were to start a law firm what technology would I use? I would have to say Software as a Service delivered from the Cloud.
Danny: I’d like to thank Tom for the insightful and excellent discussion.
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments marketing department. If you’d like to be featured in a NetDocuments Q&A, send a tweet to @NetDocuments or an email to djohnson@netdocuments.com.
October 14th, 2010
Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, cloudsourcing, document management, England, grandkids, Microsoft|
Category: Cloud Computing, collaboration, document management, Email Management, legal technology, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology
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This week in our ongoing Q&A series, we are joined by Tom Lee of Quintec International. Quintec is a leading cloud based technology company based in the UK that is aimed primarily at the Legal, Insurance and Finance markets.
Q: First off Tom, tell our readers a bit about you and your company?
Tom: Great. I have been in I.T. for over 33 years and have witnessed many changes in technology from the early Mainframes to Super- Mini’s, Client/Server and now to the Cloud! At Quintec, we provide our clients with business advice, consultancy, software, training and technical support. These services are delivered by an experienced team of consultants, a rapid support team and a plethora of technical guys who never seem to stop working! I wished I had their energy!
Q: And I’m sure they wish they had your experience. After 33 years I bet you’ve seen some interesting things in I.T. Tell me the scariest moment of your career?
Tom: That’s easy, because I still have nightmares about it!
My first job in I.T. was way back in the mid-seventies and I worked in a large Computer Operations department as a Trainee Computer Operator. This was when computer rooms were as big as football pitches and I remember this one was vast with bank after bank of disk drives, seven gigantic line printers with bursters & collators attached, card readers, and these new whizzy things called diskette drives with floppy diskettes that were 8inches wide!
I had only been working for the company a matter of weeks. There were four of us on shift one night and stupidly we decided to play football just to pass the time with a ball ingeniously crafted from paper and Sellotape. Sounds silly doesn’t it, but back then it really helped pass the time through the night while all the batch processing was going on.
Well, this one night I was in goal and I threw the ball out to a colleague a little too hard I guess. The ball hit a wall, bounced over a wall divider and somehow hit the main power supply lever! The whole room plunged into darkness and all four IBM Mainframes powered down simultaneously! Obviously this could not happen nowadays but back then, believe me IT DID!
Needless to say, this caused utter chaos and the following morning over one thousand users couldn’t logon to their terminals until about 11.30am because of me. I don’t think I have ever felt as guilty before or since! The culprit was never found and the story rarely discussed until just five years ago at a company reunion when my old boss who had recently retired, finally found out ‘from a so-called friend’ that it was me! He said that if he had of found out who was responsible he had orders to sack them on the spot!
Well what doesn’t get us fired, only makes us stronger right?
Q: I hear some people in the UK call you the “Granddaddy of document management.” How did you get this name?
Tom: It first started in a pub in London when I was relaxing with a few friends one evening after work. A few that were present that night were I.T. Directors of law firms who were messing around as one does after a few beers, and it just was something that was said in jest, I think! Then, with a couple of snippets that have been published in the press over the years, it just stuck! I guess part of it is that I’m just getting old and also that I have been involved in the release and distribution of each of the main document management systems during the past twenty years, namely SoftSolutions, DOCS Open and iManage.
In my opinion, the real granddaddies of document management are the “old boys” from the SoftSolutions outfit who released the first ever enterprise-wide DMS way back in the late 1980’s. They were the real inventors and pioneers who first spotted a gap in the market.
Incidentally Dan, you work for these guys! You should feel very proud to be working for a company of such pedigree with a long history, and with people of such repute.
In my private life I am still not a granddad yet, but I don’t think it’s going to be much longer!
Q: Well that is a great segway into my next questions. How has document management technology changed over the past 10-20 years?
Tom: WOW Dan! Give me some easy questions like what’s my favorite football team and stuff! At my age I can’t remember some of the things that happened last week let alone over the past 20 years!
Well, if you are asking me to go back that long, my view is that it was all about storing, searching and retrieving documents back then, and in my opinion, to a large extent it’s still the same today.
Back then, law firms and other document centric organizations were busy migrating away from their old DP/WP mini computers and onto the new client/server technology. This all seemed great at the time but many didn’t realize that built into the very fabric of the WP software on these super-mini computers was a primitive form of document management. Although there is no resemblance to what is available today, this held very basic profile information for each document and secretaries and typists alike had learned to rely on this as they could easily identify and retrieve documents.
Once on client/server architecture, companies found that this basic document management was lost and saving documents into folders, sub folder and sub-sub-sub folders (this always confused me) was sometimes a disaster as many versions of a document could exist so retrieving the required documents could be somewhat time-consuming and the process very confusing. I think you could use the metaphor, three steps forward and one step back, in this case. Perhaps, Microsoft and WordPerfect, the two main protagonists at the time should have included a document management option within their word processors for singleware applications. It’s a good job for me they didn’t!
Anyhow, this left the door wide open for the pioneers of this technology. Two such document management systems were released to answer to the problem. The first was SoftSolutions, in its early years quickly became the dominant player. A short time after followed the PC DOCS offering known as DOCS Open, which is better known nowadays as Open Text DM5. I believe some firms are still using a hybrid of this product to this very day.
SoftSolutions were bought out in 1994 by WordPerfect and then in quick succession by the Novell Corporation, and their DM software incorporated into their Novell GroupWise offering, I guess the rest has been written into the history books!!!
Both products were ground breaking in their day, the first being built upon the proprietary but very fast ‘FLAME’ database whilst DOCS Open did just what it said on the tin, it was ‘Open’, and could run on most of the SQL databases of the day, namely Microsoft’s SQL, SYBASE and ORACLE!
Over the years Microsoft has threatened from time-to-time to include some form of document management capability to control and manage their singleware applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc., but none of these ever came to fruition!
These day’s firms need to be quite sophisticated, they need the ability to liaise and collaborate with their clients and colleagues, to store records as well as emails in the same repository and more recently be able to store certain telephone conversations when the need arises.
Sometimes, I think that certain DM suppliers have forgotten the first rule of DM and that is to speedily search and retrieve documents! To me, it’s still the most important function provided by a DM! For example, I recently was in at a customer site and she showed me a ‘simple search’ using an industry leading DM system across 1,800 users and 40 offices worldwide! To be honest, I could have easily made a cup of coffee in the time the search results were returned! Surely, this is a drastic waste of time and resources!
Thanks Tom! That’s incredible insight and discussion.
This was just a portion of my very insightful interview with Tom Lee so check back on Thursday as part II of this Q&A will be posted.
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments marketing department. If you’d like to be featured in a NetDocuments Q&A, send a tweet to @NetDocuments or an email to djohnson@netdocuments.com.
October 12th, 2010
Tags: Cloud Computing, document management, England, grandpa, legal technology, LegalTech, Quintec, SaaS, Technology|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, document, document management, Financial Services Technology, legal technology, SaaS
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Has the world been rid of its cloud computing security concerns?
Probably not…but that day is getting closer. According to a few recent studies in a few technology conservative industries, people and businesses are becoming much more comfortable with storing and managing their data in the cloud.
Even the most technology risk-averse markets such as health care, finance and government are rapidly adopting, and even advocating, disruptive cloud technologies at an ever increasing rate.
SaaS virgins generally raise two initial fears when they consider moving to the cloud: who is in control of my data? And is it safe to store my data somewhere other than the office? Though these concerns are real and very important to understand, the immaculate perception that all my data must be stored under my roof is being changed.
In a recent article on InformationWeek.com, an expert from Accenture was quoted as saying, “Healthcare firms are beginning to realize that cloud providers actually may offer more robust security than is available in house.” That same story cited a recent study that stated that about a third of the health care industry already uses cloud apps and that over 70% of respondents plan to shift more and more to SaaS and cloud applications. These are very intriguing estimates in any field, but especially in health care where the regulatory and HIPAA compliance rules are so strict.
Similar shifts are being seen in the finance world. A recent study done by SIFMA stated how cloud computing is enabling the financial industry to push forward with technology even amidst budget restraints: “The [finance] industry is showing a larger appetite for disruptive technologies such as cloud computing to force business model change.”
Similar sentiments are being echoed even in the federal government where federal CIO Vivek Kundra has been touting cloud computing so adamantly that he almost makes Marc Benioff seem like cloud skeptic. “For far too long we’ve been thinking very much vertically and making sure things are separated,” he said.”Now we have an opportunity to lead with solutions that by nature encourage collaboration both horizontally and vertically.”
While cloud security is still a critical issue and something that must be taken extremely serious by all vendors, the mood is shifting towards general acceptance of security in the cloud.
John Soat summed things up nicely in his blog post on this very topic. “It’s not that security in the cloud isn’t still a concern for both [health care and finance] industries, but it’s a known, and perhaps better understood factor…So while security is still a legitimate concern, it doesn’t seem to be the show stopper it used to be…” So with your SaaS vendor taking care of you security concerns, you can now worry about where Lebron James will be playing basketball next year.
If you want to learn more about security in the cloud, check out our security fact sheet or hit NetDocuments or myself with a tweet at either @netdocuments or @dannymjohnson.
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments sales and marketing team.
July 1st, 2010
Tags: Cloud Computing, Federal Government, Health Care, HIPAA, SaaS, SEC|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, document management, SaaS, Technology
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Post Authored by Leonard Johnson, VP Marketing, NetDocuments
Leonard Johnson and Marc Duncan attended T3 Conference in La Jolla, California this past week on February 17th to the 20th. We not only enjoyed beautiful, warm weather at the Hilton La Jolla Hotel adjacent to the world-class Torrey Pines Golf Course, but more importantly we enjoyed visiting with many of our customers and consultants of this prestigious financial investment advisory industry. Marc works closely with our customers and prospective customers in this industry and he stated, “it was like a family reunion.” We have wonderful customers who are great to work with and we greatly appreciate their business.
 Torrey Pines Golf Course NetDocuments provides an easy-to-use document management that provides these firms with business continuity, client-centric document organization, SEC/FINRA compliance, and client sharing. We also provide a market-leading Salesforce integration and as firms move that that CRM, they all migrate to NetDocuments for their document management.
Leonard presented in two panels, one on document management and the other on client portals. There were about 40 in attendance to each one. The document management panel was interesting as we were positioned along with two other companies that were legacy, server-based DM and one other SaaS DM. It was clear by the questions and the follow up with people that this market knows that the industry trend is clearly moving to SaaS, cloud-computing based applications. We had a significant interest following both of these sessions.
I would like to share a few observations regarding this market and potential trends that would be interesting. There are too many vendors, e.g. portfolio planning or analysis software, trying to provide a “one solution fits all” approach, attempting to offer everything and the kitchen sink…which only confuses the customer and provides less than best-of-breed in each solution. Client portals are one of these solutions that everyone tries to offer. Document archiving is another area that applies in some cases.
Additionally, there have been worthwhile attempts, e.g. YourSilverBullet, that has brought vendors together under the guise that they will “technically integrate” with one another and provide customer solutions. But in speaking with their representatives, they acknowledge that their standards (two years in the making) remain elusive (i.e. years away from being defined) and that the underlying focus of this group appears to be co-marketing and leveraging their membership for joint marketing activities and gaining discounts on events and advertising. I am concerned they are ignoring the market needs and what the customer wants.
When speaking with Bruce Moulton, creator of the XLR8 overlay for Salesforce, owner of consulting firm Moulton Strategic Partners and Director of Operations for Tolleson Wealth Management, he defined four essential applications needed in every RIA firm: 1)portfolio management software, 2) financial planning software, 3) Contact Relationship Management (CRM) and 4) document management (along with backend email archiving for compliance purposes), and every firm should have the choice of best in breed products/services. This makes sense to me. The advisor interface throughout the day is typically their CRM. Document management should not be offered by the CRM provider but should tightly integrate, and the same for any financial planning software.
Bruce feels that a client portal is a logical extension of a document management solution, since it can take advantage of the full document collaboration, permissioning, security, etc., yet not force the firm into maintaining multiple copies of the same document in disparate systems.
I was quite intrigued during the client portal session when one person in the front row stated that “Mint.com” should be the front-end client portal to the client. Now that’s a fresh approach (no pun intended). I really appreciated that comment as I tend to agree.
Here’s why? Wouldn’t it be amazing if NetDocuments integrated with Mint.com (now owned by Intuit) whereby the client or person not only managed their banking accounts and personal financial information with Mint.com, a free service by the way and thus can capture wide adoption, but had the investment statements sent directly there as well (as they now do), and there was a tab or integrated, single-sign on page within Mint.com to access the investment advisors work and documents being shared by him/her, i.e. NetDocuments client portal embedded within Mint.com. NetDocuments would and should be embedded within the advisors CRM (which we do today with Salesforce.com and in future with Redtail.com), and NetDocuments should be accessible and embedded within the client’s Mint.com.as the portal or secure link from advisor to client. Mint.com truly becomes a client portal to his/her financial world. Communication by the advisor would be direct with the client via the related document and collaborative portal (NetDocuments) provided by the advisor but linked to Mint.com for a single client portal. The accountant and the lawyer who works with the same client could also share via the netdocuments portal-all secured and all compliant across industry regulatory boards.
Interesting…. any thoughts?
February 26th, 2010
Tags: Cloud Computing, Financial Advisors, Intuit, Mint.com, RIA, SaaS, Salesforce.com, t3|
Category: Cloud Computing, Financial Services Technology, paperless, Registered Investment Advisors, SaaS, Salesforce.com
1 Comment »
OREM, UTAH – February 8, 2010 – NetDocuments, the leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) content management service provider announced today that the national law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, with over 400 attorneys, has selected NetDocuments as its new document management service across its twelve offices.
Nelson Mullin’s conversion to SaaS-based NetDocuments liberates the firm and its IT team from the need to continue managing and maintaining server hardware and desktop software across its offices, resulting in more focused face time with users. NetDocuments also blends collaboration, and document, email and records management into a single, globally-accessible repository, as well as superior searching from what they had before.
“After 15 years of using the same document management platform, we feel we have the same old technology we purchased 15 years ago, even though we have gone through several expensive upgrades,” said David Worth, CIO, Nelson Mullins. “A move to NetDocuments gives us an instant boost in technology with a TCO reduction.”
The NetDocuments SaaS model services law firms of all sizes and after ten years in operation, it has the sophistication of powerful searching, two-factor authentication, ethical wall security, email and digital records management, and built-in business continuity with two redundant world-class data centers required for any prestigious national or international law firm.
“NetDocuments is pleased to welcome the Nelson Mullins firm and its nearly 1,000 users to our SaaS-based, leading next generation of document management and collaboration,” said Ken Duncan, CEO at NetDocuments. Ken went on to say, “David Worth, the firm’s long-time and progressive CIO, has been watching NetDocuments for years and is now excited to deploy the service throughout the firm’s many offices. NetDocuments is delighted to be attracting larger firms and we are particularly pleased to provide our SaaS DMS to such a prestigious firm as Nelson Mullins.”
About NetDocuments
NetDocuments is leading the industry trend for On Demand document management and collaboration services. Organizations of all sizes can save tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating the hardware, system and client software, and ongoing administration of a legacy client-server technology model. With the NetDocuments patented service simply “turned on,” business professionals can immediately begin storing, managing and sharing documents throughout the world and on any Internet-connected service device. Founded in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, NetDocuments has 90,000 users in over 144 countries. For more information about the company and management, go to www.netdocuments.com.
About Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Established in 1897, Nelson Mullins has more than 400 attorneys and government relations professionals practicing from offices in Atlanta, Boston, Tallahassee, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and throughout the Carolinas. For more information on the Firm, go to www.nelsonmullins.com , or call 803.255.9794.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners
February 7th, 2010
Tags: Change, Cloud Computing, Progressive, SaaS|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, document management, legal technology, SaaS
2 Comments »
Post authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Sales and Marketing Team
Every year Gartner, Inc. identifies the 10 strategic technologies for the year ahead. It released the 2010 edition in October and I found the results very interesting.
For Gartner to consider a technology, a “strategic technology,” it must have the “potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.”
The number one technology on the 2010 list is one that we at NetDocuments are very close to and have been doing for the past 10 years — that is “Cloud Computing.”
“Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.” – Gartner
Listed below are the other nine strategic technologies for 2010:
- Advanced Analytics
- Client Computing
- IT for Green
- Reshaping the Data Center
- Social Computing
- Security – Activity Monitoring
- Flash Memory
- Virtualization for Availability
- Mobile Applications
It was interesting to note that many of the technologies mentioned are in some form related to cloud computing or SaaS. These include “IT for Green,” “Reshaping the Data Center” and “Mobile Applications.” I will highlight each one of these below, as well as “Social Computing,” as it has become even more relevant to the business enterprise with Salesforce.com’s announcement of Chatter.
IT for Green
There are many ways to move to a more environmentally friendly workplace. The last decade saw companies do this by moving to a less paper office with the help of scanners and document management systems to reduce paper waste. The next step for these companies is to reduce energy waste by getting rid of their servers and moving to SaaS and the cloud.
Reshaping the Data Center
Gartner talks about this point in terms of design principles and mentions how a pod-based data center design approach can save space and is more efficient. I propose to take that one step farther by suggesting that a cloud-based design approach can save even more space and is even more efficient. That is because much of the data center can be eliminated by going SaaS and storing data in the cloud.
Mobile Applications
This one actually surprised me. Not because it made the list, but because it was not higher on the list. Gartner states that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will be using mobile devices capable of running rich web applications. Many software providers have already released apps for the iPhone and Android OS that provide rich functionality from anywhere in the world, and cloud computing companies such as ourselves and Salesforce.com allow users to access their entire DMS or CRM directly from the mobile device.
Social Computing
Social media is certainly on everyones radars with the popularity of Twitter and other social networks, and this point was made clearer at Dreamforce 09 when Salesforce.com announced their new Chatter feature. Chatter, which is billed as the “Facebook for the Enterprise” brings social networks to the business enterprise. To learn more about Chatter and social computing for business, read Marc Duncan’s recent blog titled, “Dreamforce Offers Glimpse into the Future of SaaS and Social Media.”
December 3rd, 2009
Tags: Cloud Computing, Gartner, Technology|
Category: Cloud Computing, paperless, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Utah technology
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Post authored by Marc Duncan of the NetDocuments Sales Team
 It was a cloudy day in San Francsisco Wow, what a week and what a show. I have just returned from the Dreamoforce 09 show in San Francisco and had an amazing experience. As a member of the NetDocuments sales team I spend a lot of time “selling” the idea of SaaS, cloud computing, etc. During this day to day routine, it is easy to wonder: is this idea really catching on? On Wednesday morning during the keynote address I was assured that yes…SaaS and Cloud computing are here to stay.
I was in the main exhibition hall surrounded by thousands of other enthusiast like myself waiting to hear from Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com. The excitement and energy in the room was unprecedented. Not only has the idea of SaaS caught on, but people are excited about the potential that SaaS and cloud computing bring to every company in every market.
One thing that really struck me was the progressive thinking of Salesforce.com. They already consider SaaS and cloud computing the great idea of the “90’s & 2000’s.” And they are now looking forward to the next decade and developing ways to integrate social networking into the daily workings of the business enterprise. My eyes were opened when Marc Benioff said, “I know more about strangers then I do my own company.” Why is it that we all know everything about our friends and very little about our co-workers? How can we know what everybody thinks of the latest movie, but have no idea what our associates think of the latest proposal? The reason is that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have passed the business world when it comes to efficiency and real-time knowledge. The answer? I believe the next decade will ultimately decide, but Salesforce took a huge step forward by introducing “Chatter.”
Chatter is the “Facebook for the enterprise” and allows users of Salesforce to post status updates, look at real time Twitter feeds, etc. Just imagine if you could know the daily buzz of your company just like you do your inner circle of friends? Imagine status postings like, “just had a great meeting with my number one client,” or “looking for ways to close this deal and need ideas.” By integrating the efficiency and intuitiveness of social networking into the technology that runs our businesses the possibilities are endless.
Cloud computing and SaaS are here to stay. My advice: Commit to this type of technology so that you can begin to take advantage of the new and limitless possibilities it brings.
December 1st, 2009
Tags: Cloud Computing, Dreamforce, SaaS, Salesforce|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, community, Financial Services Technology, SaaS, Salesforce.com
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