Tag Archives: legal cloud

Backups – that dull bit of IT that someday you wish you’d done!

Everyone who has ever lost data from their computer knows the importance of backups and for a law firm (no matter what size) it’s critical. I don’t suppose there is much point in me outlining the detail of why? But if you are interested in a good summary of why backup is a good idea try this site.

Also don’t fall into the trap of assuming that electronic data is not as safe and so keep everything as a piece paper. More often than not electronic information is just as safe (if not more so) if looked after. Take a look at this story as to why a printout in an offsite facility is not necessarily that safe!

If you work for a big law or mid-sized law firm, you’ll probably have an IT department and they will probably have some or all of the following:

  • A regime of daily and weekly backups of your data
  • Transfer of older backups to offsite locations
  • Larger firms may have multiple online data centres with your data replicated between them

For small law firms the picture may be different, but still there maybe a tape or disk backup. This may be taken offsite or perhaps even locked in a fire safe.

But even with your data backed up, there is more to just having the data safe when it comes to recovery from a disaster.

One benefit of a disk based backup (for example, on a small scale, a USB drive) is the fast recovery time. Just plug it in and access the data (in tech speak this is known as a small RTO or recovery time objective). Also there is no worry that at the time you need the backup the restoration software is not available!

For big law this switch to disk based backup is fine, this is why many have set up their multiple data centres, but what about small firms? USB drives can handle computer failure, but what about fire, flooding or other natural disasters? It’s a pain to keep swapping USB drives and taking one offsite or to have to lock it in a fire safe overnight etc (especially as the most convenient time to do the backup is overnight!)

Well take a look at this drive I recently got my hands on. It’s called an ioSafe and it’s main aim is to resolve this very problem!

ioSafe

It’s basically a fire proof, shockproof and waterproof USB drive. I’m not brave enough to trash it in the quest for a YouTube video demonstration of its capabilities, so you’ll have to take a look at these demonstrations!

BBC – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8449893.stm

Channel 5 – http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/blog/episode-1-the-desert-challenge Note the follow on point on the C5 website on how they could have got the data back following the gadget show demo.

So what’s it like as a USB drive?

Well apart from the size and weight of the device it works pretty much as you’d expect. It’s low noise, there isn’t any noticeable speed difference to old my USB drive. The only mild criticism I’d have is that the activity light on the front is a a bit dim. But basically it’s a USB drive, and it just works as you’d expect!

The big benefit I can see of a device like this to a small law firm is that it can cope with a fire, a flood or I guess an earthquake! And the benefit over a DVD backup being taken offsite is that it can give a fast RTO (this could also be the case for it being used in conjunction with tape backups in larger firms to reduce the RPO – recovery point objective (more tech speak I know, but that basically means the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time i.e. a days worth of data lost if you restore to that DVD that went offsite yesterday).

All ioSafe hardware also comes with a Data Recovery Service. So should a drive be damaged for any reason ioSafe will spend up to £500 to recover the data and then send it back to the customer on a replacement device!

For pure backup it’s a great concept and perfect for small business, but I can see a question and a future threat that you may want to consider:

The question – cost?

  • A 1Tb version is £260 vs. a 1Tb standard USB drives cost of £80
  • The value is in the fireproof, water proof aspect. Is it worth it? Well I guess if you look at a decent fire safe being £100, needing an extra drive 2x £80 to be able to pack a USB drive away each night in the safe. You’re at the same price! Then factor in the ioSafe convenience and  benefits of the DRS should there be issues with the recovery and the ioSafe doesn’t look too bad value wise!

The threat – cloud based backup!

There are some cloud based backup options but for law firms I see a few issues with these at them moment:

  • Confidentiality – ensuring that this is met and for those particularly outside the US that cross jurisdictional issues don’t crop up
  • Cost – most are subscription based and charged at cost per Gb. There could also be data transfer costs depending on your internet connection deal with your ISP.
  • Risk of the company going bust and losing the backup of your data.

Longer term I think cloud based backup may be easiest form of backup, but for now have a look at the regime you have in place and check whether it would keep your law firm going in a disaster. If you’re after a little more piece of mind with a USB based system, then maybe ioSafe is just the device for your practice?

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Head in the clouds?

Cloud computing. The latest buzz word in IT, one that is probably only knocked off the top in a Legal IT game of “buzzword bingo” by eDiscovery! I started writing this blog post a few months back, at a time when I’d been flash mobbed by “cloud computing” companies. The intention was to put down some of the things I’d seen that may be interesting  for Legal IT people, together with some of my thoughts on “cloud computing”.

So what exactly is “Cloud Computing”? According to Wikipedia:

“Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.”

That help?

Probably not, let me try. It’s basically the infrastructure (all the hardware currently located in many firms computer rooms or data centres) and rather than being in your firm it is hosted somewhere else by someone else. The location you don’t care about (in a technical sense). It’s out there somewhere and it’s always big enough for you to add all your new applications and data to.

Basically so that the worry of keeping enough space to hold all your data or enough power to run your applications is taken care of by someone else (subject to you paying them more money for more space/power of course!). And all the disaster recovery and business continuity work is taken care of.

So some of the things I’d seen that may be interesting  for Legal IT people?

One of the first to catch my eye back in the summer was Legal Cloud, I  was obviously interested in their "Legal" angle. And I subsequently ended up on a call with the CEO of Legal Cloud, Mark Hadfield. You can read on their site what they offer, but for me as an IT applications focussed person I picked up on the possible benefits for testing software. When you’ve the masses of data a lot of law firms now have it becomes difficult to test new upgrades in a way that is close to your live environment, after all finding spare storage for a few terabytes isn’t easy! Legal Cloud though can offer a “temporary use” option, i.e. you can use a few terabytes in the “cloud” which you could utilise to test say an upgrade of your DMS (Document Management System) along with the millions of documents.

Autonomy iManage’s Digital Safe product also got my attention. Allowing a consolidated archive of the vast amounts of email and documents within a law firm. This also integrates with their WorkSite DMS (which is the DMS of an awful lot of law firms) and also the IDOL engine for retrieval.

Finally I caught a few news stories about Microsoft Azure and their offerings for data, SQL server database and .NET services running in a "cloud". I was especially interested in their Web Platform Installer which to me seems a great platform to run all kinds of applications on the “Azure cloud”. As someone posted on twitter, for the home PC market this platform could do for Microsoft what the App Store has done for Apple’s iPhone platform.

As well as tangible products like these there is unfortunately an awful lot of hype surrounding cloud computing. But much as the media likes to advertise the wonders to consumers and remind us of how it will be a multi billion dollar industry in n years, at the end of the day for the most part the end user won’t notice any difference. After all if their data is sat in your computer room in the Rotherham or sat in a giant data centre "somewhere" what do they care (so long as it’s safe)?

My thoughts on cloud computing then?

First let me link you to a post on a blog I follow “3 Geeks and a Law Blog”, this post by Greg Lambert was on the possible IT reservations with the Cloud.

“The ‘Devil’ on my right shoulder starts to put two and two together and wonder if my IT/KM friends are also seeing this effect of the "cloud" and playing on the basic fears that the law firm leadership has about putting any information or resources outside the physical reaches of the firm?? Meanwhile the "Angel" on my left shoulder shouts that I’d better listen to my IT/KM folks and not be such a ‘greedy bastard’ (he’s a little foul mouthed angel) in trying to save money while exposing my firm and its information to all kinds of access, security and ethical risks.

I’m probably being over simplistic in my example, but this type of argument is probably going on right now. Cost versus Security… Cost versus Access… Cost versus Risk…. Over time, it seems that the cloud based infrastructure is going to close these holes and create a much harder argument for technology departments to win.”

Generally I have never worried about this. I am of a generation that completely understands that not only do you not have a job for life, but the industry you’re in may not last your lifetime! The IT industry certainly is not unused to outsourcing parts of if not all of its functions, so I’m not sure my “coolness” on cloud computing is through fear of my job.

The big issue I see right now though is a point Greg also raises:

“we will need high-level contract negotiators to craft the contracts between the firm and the companies providing the services”

This may prove easier for US Law Firms where the data can be hosted in US data centres. But for the global firms that cross multi jurisdictions there will be a whole raft of contracts to ensure clients know where there data is.

On the whole though I just can’t get excited by the whole cloud computing concept. For the end user it’ll be nothing different, just that your data and systems might not be sat in your computer room in the Slough office but in a giant data centre "somewhere". And maybe that’s how we need to see it. A potentially very useful piece of technology, but certainly not a silver bullet technology that is going to save billions, save the planet and sort out every one of our technology problems!

Addition: you may also want to take a read at this blog post I caught today, it has some good explanations of the different models and delivery methods of cloud computing.

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