Law Firm Technology 2011: Head for the Cloud?

Continuing cost pressure is among the factors leading firms to explore cloud-based technologies. Instead of buying and maintaining their own servers and storage, firms pay subscription fees, converting major capital expenses to ongoing and, in theory, more manageable operating expenses. Nearly two-thirds of firms report using some type of cloud-based solution. In reality, costs haven't always dropped as much as firms hoped: A fifth of cloud users say that the savings have not been as great as expected. For some applications, costly network upgrades may be required, and sometimes subscription models can be more expensive in the long run than simply running the equipment ­on-site. Indeed, firms are starting to discover that the economics of the cloud can vary widely among applications. The growing size of in-boxes, for example, combined with the cost of hiring an administrator to manage an e-mail system—upward of $100,000 a year—can make a compelling case for moving e-mail to the cloud. Yet only 35 percent of firms using the cloud have offloaded e-mail functions there, and typically those consist of spam and virus filtering, not full-blown e-mail management and storage. The reason: concerns over how to provide the appropriate level of security to data stored in the cloud. 

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