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A Call for Collaboration

Remember recess in elementary? That’s right, a hundred kids running at full speed in different directions, headed for unknown destinations, totally oblivious of who would be there and why?  Exciting, yes.  Fun, yes.  Total mayhem, you bet.  The Cloud Computing industry is growing at a break-neck pace, recess is out, and it’s time to make some sense of the chaos.

Collaboration is a broad and well trodden topic; in fact, it was Salesforce.com’s theme at their event of the year, titled “Collabor8”.  But just because Salesforce.com can throw around phrases like “collaborative software”, or taking a “collaborative approach” in their business vernacular, it doesn’t make it any easier to grasp in a real sense, nor to implement in a real-life, competitive and fast-paced environment, especially if your business has nothing to do with Salesforce.com.

Note: If you think collaboration is a cliché topic, then you don’t really understand how far reaching of a “principle” it really is.  It is the secret sauce to the budding industries and technologies of social media, software/technology design, the user experience, and channel management, so quit you’re complaining and put your “cliché” card away.

I’m not talking about collaboration specific to the NetDocuments world, although it’s worth mentioning that client portals, data rooms, extranets, threaded discussions, notifications, alerts, and workspaces are all collaborative tools available within NetDocuments’ functionality (shameless plug), but I’m talking about Collaboration from a bird’s eye perspective in the developing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry.  Business solutions aggregators are beginning to sprout and take shape; timely since CNET has just validated that one of the “Top 12 Cloud Gifts of 2010” is the broad acceptance of Cloud Computing.  What immediately follows acceptance? Chaos.  What should follow chaos? Collaboration.

Here are a few industry-specific collaborators – Let’s see what they have to offer…

The Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA)

The LCCA is specific to the legal industry and has comprised some innovative and thought leading organizations who among others, purport to be leading the “cloud computing” pack.  Member organizations surround practice management and technology consulting for the legal professional, including: Clio, DirectLaw, RocketMatter, and TotalAttorneys.  If the aim is to define standards and best practices, and form policies and guidelines, the list is not yet complete but I’m thrilled to see it beginning to take shape.

The LCCA’s charter

  • Provide a unified and consistent voice for vendors in the legal cloud computing market;
  • Collaborate and cooperate with Bar Associations and other policy-forming bodies in efforts to form policies and guidelines relating to the use of cloud computing in law practices;
  • Define standards and best practices;
  • Provide educational resources to attorneys and the broader legal community on cloud computing and the technical, legal and ethical issues relating to cloud computing

The Virtual Solutions Consortium

Virtual Solutions Consortium (VSC) aggregates financial services solutions and resources into one central location, separated by two main categories: Virtual Staff and Resources.  Virtual Staff includes links to operational managers, compliance consultants, web developers, and accountants.  The resources tab includes C-level strategists, coaching, client portals, and document management.  VSC seeks to answer the questions: What can I outsource?  What should I outsource?  Who can I outsource it to?  With a concise set of value-ads such as:

  • Increased efficiency and productivity
  • Expert advice and execution
  • Greater flexibility
  • Significant cost savings

Virtual Solutions and the LCCA are two innovative organizations seeking to bring collaboration and unity to the chaos and clutter of the cloud computing industry.  I applaud their initiative, but there is still a lot of work to be done to collect and unite the key stakeholders across vertical markets and the industry as a whole. To learn more about new collaboration, or to contribute to the discussion, send a tweet to @NetDocuments or @MarriottMurdock.

Post written by Marriott Murdock of the NetDocuments marketing team and head of channel development

December 21st, 2010
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Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, Compliance, Cost Savings, document management, Document Management for Salesforce, Financial Services Technology, legal, legal technology, Registered Investment Advisors, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology
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How Does the Fourth Amendment Relate to the Cloud?

This post was authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments sales and marketing group.

The Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and is a vital part of the United States Constitution. As data stored in the cloud continues to proliferate, the debate on how this law relates to the security of this data will become increasingly important.

Recently, a very in depth analysis on this topic was released in the June 2009 edition of the Minnesota Law Review titled, “Defogging the Cloud: Applying Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing.” The article discusses how the fourth amendment relates to data stored in the cloud. The article was written by David Couillard, who is in his final year at Minnesota Law School.

The Law Review article was brought to my attention by James Urquhart, who writes on cloud computing for CNET.com. Urquhart breaks down the law review article and provides a clear path for how the law should treat data stored in the clouds in an article titled “Does the Fourth Amendment Cover the ‘Cloud’”?

Urquhart sums up the discussion very nicely and lays a solid framework as to how this issue could be approached:

“Coulliard wraps up with a suggested framework for applying the Fourth Amendment to “the cloud” that is very much in line with my own thinking. Treat digital assets on third-party sites not as transactions (like phone numbers dialed), but in the same way you would treat physical assets kept in an apartment or storage locker:

‘[T]he service provider has a copy of the keys to a user’s cloud “storage unit,” much like a landlord or storage locker owner has keys to a tenant’s space, a bank has the keys to a safe deposit box, and a postal carrier has the keys to a mailbox. Yet that does not give law enforcement the authority to use those third parties as a means to enter a private space.

The same rationale should apply to the cloud. In some circumstances, such as search engine queries, the third party is clearly an interested party to the communication. But when content data, passwords, or URLs are maintained by a service provider in a relationship more akin to that of landlord-tenant, such as private Google accounts, any such data that the provider is not directly interested in should not be understood to be open to search via consent or a waiver of Fourth Amendment protection.’

Amen, Mr. Coulliard. Personally, I hope the courts note this framework, and begin applying it to Fourth Amendment cases arising from Internet-based computing immediately. Furthermore, I call for Congress to explicitly codify a similar framework with laws that clearly and unequivocally state the rights of users with respect to their data in the cloud.”

I would recommend reading the entire Urquhart article to fully understand the implications and possible approaches to addressing the issue of cloud data and the fourth amendment.

January 26th, 2010
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Category: Cloud Computing, document management, legal, SaaS
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