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22 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 migrations into the cloud skyrocketed in 2020. Many law firms have been budgeting for the migration of specific functions and services for years. Once the global pandemic hit, even those organizations that were in the early stages of or had not yet begun planning moves to cloud and managed services providers recognized the value of these scalable, secure and focused solutions. For those firms that had yet to budget for cloud solutions and migrations, remote work made the move obvious, if not necessary – without the cloud, there is no reliable way to scale up without significant financial investment. Organizations that relied on internal support teams often found themselves understaffed as support staff was dealing with the same issues as end users. After almost a year of living with COVID-19- mandated distancing, firms now have less loyalty to their legacy physical environments, often see these centralized and highly capitalized environments as a risk and have a greater acceptance of and desire for remote work environments. This is a fundamental shift that will lead to the continued acceleration of acceptance for cloud solutions and managed services in 2021. The question now is not whether it makes sense to migrate to the cloud, but rather, how to identify which cloud solution providers are most appropriate for your firm. The Pandemic Effect on Cloud Adoption COVID-19 compelled entire workforces to operate remotely. This created bottlenecks and complexity that frequently could only be quickly resolved using cloud solutions. The cloud had the resources available when demand required even when the mass migration to working from home created exponential demand. The largest cloud providers were able to meet the sudden increase of demand on resources due to their scale, logistics and infrastructure. This mandated migration also hastened the acceptance of cloud solutions and opened firms' and legal professionals' eyes to letting someone else provide infrastructure as a service, aka cloud operations. For those firms that already leveraged managed service providers, they were able to take advantage of similar scaling of logistics infrastructure to support their users' increased requirements. Having relationships with third parties allowed law firms to punch above their weight and address problems and make adjustments to meet their needs during an exceedingly difficult and complicated time. The inability to plan for an event such as the pandemic and its inherent challenges taught firms a valuable lesson: if you try to provide all the IT resources required for your organization via internally hosted systems and staff, you are likely to either overspend for capacity and functions that are rarely needed or be drastically under capacity when you need it most. As a result, firms have recognized that shifting the obligation to plan for, manage for and implement scale to cloud and managed service providers is more economical and safe when compared to internally managed solutions. Among the most popular functions being moved out of house are help desk, managed services and infrastructure management, whether in the form of infrastructure as a service or software as a service. To Cloud or Not to Cloud? When it comes to securing the right IT infrastructure for your firm, there are different approaches to choose from, ranging from building everything yourself from the ground up to completely outsourcing everything to a specialized provider. Think about it like getting a cake for a special event. You have three options for obtaining the perfect cake: F E A T U R E S

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