We’re seeing a pattern of moving away from integrating all our systems with each other – our mantra in law firms has thus far been ‘if you can, integrate it!’. I see minimal integration going forward. That’s changing and it’s changing because we’re all seeing the benefits (not least of which are financial) of putting our systems in the cloud. And we all know that cloud integration isn’t easy or cost efficient. There will of course be a need for integration (eg a document needs to know which matter it is related to) and so there will be some hybrid solutions available – but largely I see the trend will be away from integration and we’ll work in the way consumers do; specific systems for specific purposes: I don’t integrate my Doodle with my DropBox and I don’t need to!
Already this year we’ve put our service desk system and our video conferencing in the cloud, our appraisal and objective system has been in the cloud for a few years and email management and archiving has been there for many years. This trend will simply continue. We’re now scoping a cloud telephony system. I said last year that we will see document management systems move away from on premise – and there are a few offerings available so it would be good to hear about the plans of the other main vendors of practice management and client relationship management systems (who cannot continue to rely upon huge expensive on-premise installs). As soon as one of the big players moves the others will have to follow.
And the reader should know that when I say cloud, I mean true cloud – {i}not{/i} bunging my servers in the vendor’s datacentre.
{b}Jan DeCerce is Director of IT and Operations and Lewis Silkin{/b}
