P2P

14 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 | W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 • Feature set: new entrants are increasingly cloud-only and many established providers have a cloud-first policy. If you want a vendor's latest product set, it is likely that you will need to look to their SaaS offering. • Better user experience? In the case of SaaS, a single product set and frequent, smaller upgrades may allow more focused vendor support and the avoidance of monolithic upgrades that require months of planning and change management. • Infosec: compared to the complexity of on-premise systems that have been developed over many years, can a dedicated cloud provider do a better job of cyber security than you? Due to the nature of SaaS service provision, It may be easier to prove with logs and monitoring that data has been effectively administered per the provisions of the client in terms of who has access, level of access, proof of access, and other evidence of compliance controls. "Put simply, moving to the cloud will allow your firm to remain competitive. If not all, then at least the vast majority of software vendors are adopting a cloud first strategy which allows them to deliver improvements to their products to their customers much more quickly amongst a host of other benefits both for the vendor and the customer. As such many vendors are starting to only make improvements to their products available in their cloud versions. Therefore if you wish to provide your business with the very best technology, adoption of a cloud first strategy will become increasingly critical. The more important question is when to do it and the answer to that can be found for your firm by weighing up the capabilities of your chosen vendors, the regulatory and statutory position of the jurisdictions your firm operates in, the risk appetite of your firm and the views of your clients." — Nathan Hayes, IT Director, Osborne Clarke. "Cloud Services have allowed firms to move their IT focus away from traditional processes primarily aimed at keeping the lights on, and to shift to having their IT resources focusing instead on delivering business transformation projects now built on the foundations of these Cloud solutions." —Andy Brown, CTO, Mobliciti. And the downside? Whilst there are numerous potential benefits, there are of course challenges in moving law firm IT services into the cloud. So what makes that decision difficult? • Integration challenges: moving part of the firm's application stack can be testing, and SaaS services may not offer the same reporting options or customisations. In reality, those existing integrations built in-house over decades probably aren't all needed and modern APIs are likely more secure than whatever was cobbled together onsite, but the fact remains there is still some change to deal with. • Alignment with large platform providers (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud): whilst they all offer multi- cloud/hybrid options and containerisation to accommodate workloads or datasets not suited to public cloud, is it better to align with one or spread services across multiple Cloud Services Providers (CSPs)? The logistics of moving services into the cloud may force a particular direction or at least affect the uptake of other cloud services. Your firm may choose one CSP. Your clients may require you use parts of another. And SaaS solutions you utilize may reside on a third provider's platform. • Infosec: the demands of ISO27001 and SOC2, more prescriptive controls such as PCI DSS and Cyber F E A T U R E S

• Cover