Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/16612
inconsistent and inefficient. For example, when a new employee joins the legal department or changes roles within the company, an IT administrator has to access potentially dozens of systems to add that person or change his or her role, and to set up or edit the employee’s security permissions. • Expensive Integrations Effectively sharing or passing the necessary data between disparate systems often requires deep integrations. Developing and maintaining these integrations can be complex, often requiring investment in resources with advanced programming skills, using third-party consultants, or paying the system vendor to perform and maintain the integrations. DIFFICULTY SUPPORTING BUSINESS NEEDS Every law department has unique needs that change over time. To support requests such as these today typically requires someone with advanced programming skills or paying the system vendor or a third-party consultant to make, test, and deploy the changes, any of which can mean a significant investment of resources and time. Any of these options can mean a significant investment of resources and time. These changes often need to be propagated across multiple systems, requiring even more investment. In addition, every department has its own unique needs, which are not necessarily supported by their existing vendors’ software. IT departments then face the inevitable build vs. buy decision. Either can represent yet another significant investment, as well as another point system to integrate, maintain, and train end users and administrators on. 38 Infrastructure Technologies ILTA White Paper THE SOLUTION The solution to these and many other IT challenges caused by the proliferation of legal systems is to consolidate all of them on a single, common technology platform. An article entitled, “Radically Simple IT,” by David M. Upton and Bradley R. Staats states, “. . . simplifying the IT infrastructure allows a company to reduce complexity, deepen specialized expertise, and increase the potential for reusing elements of the system — all of which accelerates development and lowers maintenance costs.” A technology platform does just that. A technology platform provides a solid foundation of infrastructure for all systems by housing any core components that are common and reusable across all applications, regardless of the application’s specific business purpose. This includes components such as security, a database, search and a business intelligence engine (see Figure 1). Anytime a software developer builds a new application, these are the elements that are always necessary and the first to be built. They typically represent approximately 80 percent of the total infrastructure of any application, with the remaining 20 percent being functionality or business logic that is unique to an application. The problem is that there is a great deal of inconsistency in how these core components are designed from one application to the next, often even when the applications are from the same vendor. This, of course, leads to some of the IT challenges previously discussed. In their article, Upton and Staats propose a modular approach to system architecture, stating that “A truly modular architecture allows designers to focus on building solutions to local problems without