Does It Compute?

Visiting the Cloud

Many firms may not want to “live in the cloud,” either because they don’t quite trust the applications/providers or because the applications they want to use are not available in a Software as a Service selection.  But almost everybody is looking for ways to extend the programs that they do use when they are away from the office, whether just for a couple of hours or on a more extended trip.

The first step in doing this is of course using a PDA of some sort (Palm, Blackberry). This synchronizes your contacts, calendar and email, which are the primary things that people use.  A Blackberry or Palm with “push” technology will also drop down your new emails to the PDA.

However, there are three glaring absences here.  First, updates to the calendar are not pushed out to the device; second, you cannot bill time on the fly; and third, you have no access to your documents.

Two companies have recently released products that remedy some or all of these deficiencies.

Gavel and Gown has released “Amicus Mobile” which puts a slimmed down version of Amicus on a Windows-based PDA (it must be Windows-based; it will not work with Blackberries). This enables you to see any updates to your calendar that have been made in the office (as well as transmitting any new appointments you make back to your office calendar where other people can see it). Perhaps even more importantly, when you make ore receive a phone call, you can bill time for it and that billable time is transmitted back to the office where if necessary you can edit it later.

Worldox has released Worldox/Web Mobile. In addition to allowing you to access your documents with any web browser, this enables you to call up, view and email documents using any java-enabled PDA. It is not limited to a specific operating system (Blackberry, Windows, Palm). I have it working with my Palm 700p and it works great. So if you are talking with somebody you can easily say “I’ll email you the document” and do it on the fly.

Web Outages vs. Network Outages

Amazon.com’s S3 web service went down for about 5 hours earlier this week. If you are interested in cloud computing or Software as a Service, this raises the obvious question of reliability.

Let’s first set a baseline of your own, in-house network. How often to you have to say “boy, the network’s really slow today,” or “I’m having trouble accessing the Internet,” or “Outlook is not available?” 

Are any problems you have on the Internet actually more frequent or worse that what you experience on your own in-house network?  Very likely not. There is, however, a big psychological difference: on your own network, you have some degree of control over what will happen as well as a degree of accountability. Whereas on the Internet, when your provider says “we’re working on it,” you are completely helpless.

Many people currently have the ability to access their work PCs from home.  Think about it: what is the performance like when you do this?  How often do you experience serious time-lag with mouse movement or other functions? Do you have display issues due to different size monitors and resolutions? If you were using web-based application that is probably close to the performance you would have 8 hours a day.  I know that I find when I am doing remote control, it is ok for a brief time, but certainly not something I would like to have to do all day long.

On a related issue, for people considering VOIP or all those promotions for Comcast digital voice.  Compare how often your internet connection goes out (mine goes out for several hours every 2-3 months at least) vs. how often your telephone line goes down (almost never).

Living in the Cloud(s)

Lets say you are a solo or very small firm and you decide you want to “live in the cloud,” that is, use all Internet-based applications and have as little as possible on your local network. If you only have 2 or 3 computers, you might even be able to get rid of a server.

What applications are currently available to do this? 

Basic document production and email: Google Apps, gmail, Thunderbird

Practice Management - LexisNexis Practice Advantage (i.e., TimeMatters on the web)

Time and Billing - Bill4Time

Document Management - NetDocuments

About the only thing this leaves out is accounting software, although in theory you could use the BillingMatters piece of LN Practice Advantage.

Even a year or so ago this would not have been possible. But as the various offerings have gotten more mature, it is now feasible, with a couple of caveats.

First, you have to decide to go with what is available and not what you may want or what is best for your practice.  The choice on the web is very much more limited. You will also lose out on various utilities, add-ons, etc.

Second, you have to trust the various providers with your data. For many people this is still the deal-breaker.  There are simply too many things that can go wrong. This objection is partly in the process of being remedied, however. NetDocuments, for example, will let you “back up” the web-based documents to a local server, so that you have a local copy if anything goes wrong. Other web-based apps that cater to businesses (as opposed to individuals) are likely to adopt this approach as well.

So for now, a “cloud” solution is possible but perhaps iffy. Within a year or two it will become entirely feasible.

Sharing Calendars on the Web

Someone recently asked me about sharing calendars on the web. The most obvious choice here is the Google calendar. But what about synchronizing that with your Outlook calendar?  Easy (he said). Google now makes a utility (Google Calendar Sync) that lets you synchronize bi-directionally or in either direction with Outlook. There are other utilities out there as well.

However, when I went to install it, I got an error message stating that I have “outdated time zone information.” This is a common error, since it is on the short list of frequent error messages.

When I went to install Time Zone patches, they would not install, presumably because I recently installed SP3 for Windows XP.  So, it’s a great idea, but it may or may not work for you.

LexisNexis Links In to LinkedIn

LexisNexis announced Wednesday a link to the LinkedIn, the business social networking program. A LinkedIn icon will be displayed next to the profile of attorneys who are members, and next to the profile of firms that have attorney members. If the person searching is also a member of LinkedIn, he or she can access the connection directly by clicking on the LinkedIn icon.

To the extent that this provides more information about the attorney being searched for, it will certainly be a valuable addition. Also, given the old saw that anyone is just three steps removed from anyone else, it can serve as the basis of referrals. On the other hand, since social networking sites (business or not) tend toward self-aggrandizement, caveat emptor.