Geo-aware global storage solution provides firms with global, regional, and local storage flexibility

Salt Lake City, December 6, 2016 – NetDocuments, the leading cloud document and email management (DMS) provider for law firms and corporate legal departments, today introduced its ndFlexStore technology, which allows firms anywhere in the world to physically store their documents and emails in the cloud, in Microsoft Azure datacenters, in local on-premises stores, or in any combination of the above while simultaneously leveraging NetDocuments' global cloud platform.

As we wrap up another amazing year at NetDocuments, we thought we'd open up the blog to one of our friends in the financial services industry. Enjoy, and see you in 2013!

By Sheryl Rowling, CPA/PFS

CEO, Total Rebalance Expert®

I've written other articles about providing excellent client service. So, how can this article provide any new information? Whether the information is new or just a reminder, the New Year ushers in an opportunity to bring our practices to the next level!

Whether it's Gartner, IDC, GigaOm Research, or The Legal IT Professionals Survey, you can be certain that the question is no longer "is the cloud here to stay?" but has become, "where and for what applications should we implement the cloud first?"

Witnessing the 60,000+ attendees at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event (where everything is cloud-based) highlighted the contrasting sentiment about cloud adoption that has historically existed between industries. The legal and financial services markets have typically been slower to adopt new technology, due to regulation and highly confidential data, amongst a number of other factors. However, according to recent reports, the winds are shifting and firms in these air-tight industries are learning about the extreme benefits the cloud brings in terms of security, flexibility, business continuity, and mobility – it's these benefits in efficiency and cost savings that are causing a tipping point for legal cloud adoption.

In 2011, Hewlett-Packard (HP) [HPQ NYSE] acquired Autonomy, the UK-based software company for over $10 billion dollars. After a collective gasp, the tech industry debated how a company like Autonomy could reach that level of valuation, and why HP, who has struggled for years finding its place in the modern software/hardware space, would empty the coffers to make the acquisition. After all, Oracle called Autonomy's former CEO, Mike Lynch, on his bluff, stating the market value of $6 billion at the time was overpriced, and this was before HP plopped down the whopping $10+. After a year of head shaking, we now know how they pulled it off – like so many other big-company-scandals, Autonomy cooked the books.

There have been a lot of great posts about the important questions you should be asking your vendor before doing business with them, and here is another. The cloud space is increasingly crowded and new companies are popping up every day – this makes your job as a business owner, attorney, financial advisor, or IT professional very difficult as you sift through the "cloud washing" and fluff to find the vendors who have appropriately invested in the right security, privacy, compliance, and redundancy measures.

Download PDF

INTRO

"We've been using NetDocuments for over six years and have increased our productivity and collaboration across offices and clients." - Brian Marsh, Information Systems Manager

20 years ago Jim Payne and Dan Fears began their practice as an employment defense firm in California. Today, Payne & Fears has expanded into business litigation, insurance and construction law, with five offices across three states and employing nearly 100 people. Brian Marsh, the Information Systems Manager, led the switch from iManage to NetDocuments over six years ago, here's their story.

Whether you're a small firm with a few people, or part of a global company with many offices, you've likely felt the good and bad effects when new technology is purchased, implemented, or force-fed to users. The technology itself may be the perfect solution to a problem, but this doesn't always translate into user adoption, efficiency, or the increase in productivity that you'd hoped for.

Why? Your answer will be different from the company across the street currently shaking with the pain of tech adoption and withdrawals from their "old way" of doing things, but in both failed scenarios, disaster could have been avoided with a few simple concepts. This post is a precursor to a formal whitepaper NetDocuments will produce. Our Professional Services Department and community of channel partners have implemented well over 1,000 firms. They have boiled it down to five key ingredients every successful tech rollout needs.

It's been two years since NetDocuments officially launched the "Channel Partner Program". Today the partner community has grown to over 80 companies with consultants and offices all over the globe. It has been great to see and learn from these amazing companies and people, and we're extremely happy to say that many of the "NetDocuments Certified" partners have stepped clients through the entire sales, training, data migration and implementation process.

 

Alvin Tedjamulia, CTO, NetDocuments, will demonstrate the NetDocuments powerful searching technology and efficient methods to increase awareness and better analyze content from across the organization. He will also train on using NDSearch Analysis, which automatically

exposes unknown content as it extracts and displays relevant topics and content choices that match the user's interest. This webinar is extremely beneficial for existing customers but also for anyone who wants to stay current on the latest in NetDocuments functionality and enhanced design and learn why the most prestigious of firms are migrating to NetDocuments.

NetDocuments released a brand-new interface to the public on September 30th, and we think it's pretty awesome. Feedback from firms that have adopted the new interface is that it is "very intuitive, easy to learn, and much more user friendly in daily operations."

We took it for a spin ourselves, and agree it presents significant usability improvements. We'll share our observations:

The basic unit of navigation is your "Home Page". This is now a customizable, easy navigation page that has default sections of Favorite Workspaces, Favorite Items and Active Matters. One of the most exciting features in this new interface is the ability to click on a yellow star icon next to any of your Files, Workspaces and Projects; they are then automatically added to your home page.