P2P

20 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 F E A T U R E S Andrew Powell is responsible for setting and implementing Macfarlanes' IT and information security strategies. Having originally trained as an architect, he has spent two decades leading legal technology teams in Edinburgh and London, joining Macfarlanes in 2016. A Chartered Fellow of the BCS, he is a member of ILTA's Talent Council and co-chair of the International Programming Team. "A confluence of forces are driving law firms to the cloud. Among them are increased productivity and collaboration that drive robust improvements in remote working and client service. Key adoption drivers for modern cloud solutions also include providing the scalability to support business growth on demand, as well as advanced security to safeguard firm and client data in an increasingly complex threat landscape. Moving to the cloud removes the onus of managing technology infrastructure to enable legal professionals and their firms to focus on the business of law." — Neil Araujo, CEO and co-founder, iManage. Jim McKenna, CIO at Fenwick, sums it up: "There was a time when people said "if" they would go to the cloud. During the pandemic, that rapidly shifted to "when we move to the could". Now, some are being asked "why aren't we in the cloud?" The cloud offers capacity, speed to solutions, reduces dependence upon hard to find on-prem talent, works across different platforms, and allows people to focus on business problems instead of maintenance. Safe and proper utilization of the cloud is an inevitability." ILTA F U R T H E R R E A D I N G The annual ILTA Technology Survey looks at a broad range of technology trends across 400+ firms and is well worth a read for some broader law firm context when considering cloud adoption. The 2021 survey was released in November and is free of charge to participant firms or available to purchase from ILTA. N I S T D E F I N I T I O N S IaaS: The capability offered by the service provider allows a firm to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources. The firm is able to deploy and run software of its choosing, which can include operating systems and applications. PaaS: The capability offered by the service provider allows a firm to deploy onto the provider's cloud infrastructure firm-created or acquired applications, created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. SaaS: The capability offered by the service provider allows a firm to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The firm does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure.

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