Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/98946
ILTA's 2012 Financial Management Poll Results on data, security, workload, e-discovery initiatives and hardware. Most law firms have nowhere near the amount of resources, people and equipment that cloud technology can offer. Cloud technology solutions often have state-of-the-art data centers with backup strategies and redundancy stretching from coast to coast, providing strong continuity. The protection of those data centers is backed with security clearance and a constant-power control center, typically powered by diesel generators in the event of a power outage. Upgrades and constant patching are typically included in most offerings, and most provide some sort of 24/7 support 365 days a year. For these and many other reasons, a growing number of firms are moving away from traditional servers and decreasing their footprint of hardware, making the switch to virtual servers. At the time of the 2008 ILTA Technology Survey, 36 percent of firms hadn't even considered virtualization as an option for critical servers. ILTA's 2012 Technology Survey indicates that only eight percent of firms participating in the survey are not considering virtualization. In the span of four years, the use of virtualization has grown considerably. Our journey to the cloud began with our document management system (DMS). After many attempts to adjust our DMS to make it perform to the requirements of our staff and attorneys, it was obvious the system needed an overhaul. What we initially envisioned would have required additional hardware and software. The firm's technology committee and our partners agreed that we needed to put the brakes on that route and come up with a different solution. In the end, we opted to move away from a traditional DMS and locate our DMS in the cloud, using NetDocuments. ILTA White Paper 7