HBR Consulting law firm cloud strategy: More than “cloud first”
Law firm cloud adoption continues to rise, with 72% of firms reporting they expect their adoption of cloud-based solutions to increase in the coming year, according to the 2019 ILTA Technology Survey. The potential economic benefits of the cloud have always been attractive: the substitution of operating expenses for traditional capital intensity; the scalability of consumption-based pricing; and the ability to allow core IT to innovate. The current adoption trend in legal appears to be driven by improved understanding of security models and mitigation of risk concerns, as well as increased client willingness to use cloud solutions themselves. (See HBR’s whitepaper, Forecast: Law Firms Will Be Cloud Ready By 2021.)
As adoption has increased, so has the complexity of available options. The cloud is different from traditional legal applications. It is not an application _ it cannot be purchased, configured and deployed. It is not a discrete piece of software. It is at once a platform, a mechanism for scaling processing power, a data management channel and an ecosystem of related, distributed solutions. These constructs necessitate process, organization and governance changes to be able to leverage cloud solutions effectively across a firm (enterprise). A cloud strategy orients the IT organization to the opportunities and sets the road-map for cloud adoption, integration and management. The purpose of this white paper is to explain the key considerations and best practices for defining an enterprise cloud strategy.
