The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/27607
Negotiate Your Ideal Telecom Contract marginal service. Chances are you will have damaged your relationship, and it can come back bite you later on. The next time you need a little pressure on the support side of a ticket, your rep may be in meetings all day. Or, when you hear about special incentives for existing services, you might not get the word as quickly as your peers (who are your firm’s competitors). Instead, be prepared to compromise on a price or terms of an agreement that benefits the vendor as well as your firm. Identify any issues that might be sticking points for the vendor, but about which you don’t have an opinion. You don’t want to voice that; however, during negotiations you might want to concede the point and let the vendor score, perhaps making it easier to win your own concession later on. Keep your communication friendly and professional at all times. It’ll go a long way to helping you get what you want. Know What You Don’t Know In negotiating, as in so many other contexts, knowledge is power. Ideally, you will walk into the negotiation with all the answers before the questions have been asked, but in reality, this is usually not the case. You do not know the vendor’s That has changed with the iPad. Because of the screen size, we have been able to publish a virtual desktop on the backend with Citrix XenDesktop. You can take that firm image (whether it’s Windows XP or 7), package it up and publish it out. Someone with Citrix Receiver on the iPad can literally turn the whole screen into what you’d see on the desktop in your office — the task bar, start button and the ability to launch multiple apps from the start button. Even with these developments, the iPad hasn’t proven to be a full-time laptop replacement because users find it’s still necessary to have the keyboard, mouse and other features in a single device. People are primarily using it when they are traveling between offices or away for a personal weekend, for example. They just throw the iPad in a bag and go. RUNNING APPLICATIONS As with the iPhone, the iPad runs thousands of apps from the App Store, either through Apple or from third-party vendors. The inherent issue with a local app, however, is that the iPad is a very popular mobile device, so it’s desirable to thieves. One of the great things about Citrix Receiver for iPad (and this is core to Citrix architecture) is that all you’re getting on the device is a screenshot — nothing is stored locally. When you’re using Word, Outlook, Excel or any of your practice group-specific applications, they’re all running on a server in the data center, and you’re at no risk of having client data stored on the iPad. We don’t feel that the need, or business justification, is there to specifically develop an application for the iPad or iPhone (iOS). With Citrix Receiver and the data center structure, approximately 150 applications — out of the 300 we run — are available in Citrix. If a user wants an app on the iPad, it’s published in Citrix, so the Citrix Receiver on the iPad is all you need. Log in, launch the app and you’re up and running. A DEVICE EVERYONE CAN LOVE When Apple released the iPad, we had a few delivered to us that day. Within 10 minutes, we had downloaded Citrix Receiver from the App Store, and were running our Windows corporate desktop in the iPad. With no new investment on the front end or for developing applications, we were immediately able to have a practitioner come in with an iPad, secure it and apply our policies so they could use Citrix Receiver. Just like that, they could begin using Word and PowerPoint on their iPad. For the first month or so after the initial deployment, we heard from many practitioners who told us how happy they were using the iPad for work. They are utilizing the same device for personal and business use, which gives them the ability to use the apps they love, watch a movie, see their vacation photos or respond to a client. When users get this excited, you know we’re finally starting to see the real intermingling of personal and corporate technology. ILTA Christopher Lewis is the Manager of Software Services for SNR Denton. He manages the Citrix environment, packaged software deployment, the desktop platform, and mobility solutions. Chris is managing the firm’s migration strategy to Citrix as the primary computing platform, originally using a published applications approach with XenApp, now moving to published desktops with XenDesktop. Prior to SNR Denton, Chris spent 10 years in IT consulting with Accenture and Avanade, delivering and managing large custom software and infrastructure deployment projects. He can be reached at christopher.lewis@snrdenton.com. Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 53