Companies around the world are migrating all or part of their operations to the cloud. Law firms, however, are lagging far behind due to concerns about security and government regulation. According to IT support experts in West Palm Beach, these concerns are valid, but should not prevent moving some operations to the cloud.
Before you start the migration, you should answer the following five questions:
1. Do You Currently Use the Cloud in Any Capacity?
You may automatically say "no," but think about your entire operation. Do you use any online Google service? Do you do social media marketing? Are your employees using any Software as a Service for data processing or accounting? If you said yes to any of these, you are already on the cloud. Knowing your firm's current infrastructure is a critical first step.
2. What Access Do You Have with Technical Experts?
You may have an IT person you hire as needed. That person probably doesn't have the technical expertise to migrate any part of your firm to the cloud.
Migrating to the cloud can be complicated and costly, especially for larger firms. That's why it's important to have the right technical expertise on hand, according to IT support experts in West Palm Beach.
3. What Kind of Data Does Your Firm Handle?
All legal data is sensitive. However, some data has to be controlled in special ways. For example, if your firm handles proprietary information for clients, you may be contractually obligated to store it off the cloud.
Other firms need to gather data and store large amounts of data, especially at the start of a class-action lawsuit. Renting cloud storage is much more cost-effective than buying new servers.
4. What Budget Do You Have for Infrastructure?
On-site IT infrastructure requires a major upfront investment of capital. Moving to the cloud shifts the cost from capital to operational. The initial investment is much smaller. For smaller firms, this lower upfront cost is attractive.
5. How Mature is Your Security?
Did you know the majority of law firm data breaches were through on-premise systems rather than cloud repositories? Cloud providers have become experts at data security. When you store your data on their systems, you're less likely to have a security breach.
These questions will help guide you down the path towards migrating all or part of your infrastructure to the cloud. For assistance or guidance, call the IT support experts in West Palm Beach. Contact Nexxan Technologies today.