Rekall’s Law Firm Cloud Email Solution, Everything You Need
In recent weeks we’ve been doing a crazy amount of cloud migration work, moving law firm email systems, and documents and accounting software to the cloud. As far as email goes we’re offering 2 solutions Office 365 & Microsoft Hosted Exchange. Both are solid Microsoft products, and we work with you to chose the right one for your firm. For document handling in the cloud, we work with Sugarsync. Sugarsync is the best method for small firms to share documents within an office. It offers file and folder level security as well as advanced file retention policies. For accounting, we’ve successfully deployed PClaw into our cloud server letting multiple people track time and billing simultaneously offering virtually no downtime. Each solution offers your firm 99% up-time which is a guarantee you will not get if you currently run all these technologies through office servers.
While we have cloud packages in place, it’s important to understand that our cloud solutions are not limited by specific software. Any software that your firm works with can operate within a cloud server. Technically, anything can be installed in a cloud server due to the nature of our setup. The point of moving your law firm to the cloud is to decrease downtime and increase work flexibility. All you need is an internet connection and you’ll be able to access your files, email or any application from anywhere may it be Windows, Mac, iPhone or iPad. Also know that if your firm setup is advanced, perhaps a portion can be placed on the cloud. In almost every situation, email can be migrated to the cloud, making your law firm less susceptible to downtime. In this way, partial cloud options are excellent as well.
Think of the benefits, being able to work from home or access vital documents and billing information on the road with virtually no downtime. Your email never being disrupted by downtime or the standard blanket of issues that firms deal with when they have their own email server. Over time your IT bills decrease as well. While there is still maintenance involved, your calls for IT support will decrease over time. This is a trend that we see in all our law firms who adopt cloud solutions. This technology is so much simpler and easier to work with that it takes less support overall.
As far a pricing goes for cloud solutions it’s a monthly fee usually based on the size of your firm. While it is on par with server monitoring costs for in-house servers, you have to really weigh the benefits when compared to buying a server for your firm. As we saw during Hurricane Sandy, a server in your office has a few points of failure. If you have no power, you have no server, and essentially your attorneys cannot bill or access client documents. The other issue is internet. While you can work and bill in your office without internet, you can’t get emails out or correspond with your clients. These were the two issues that were the most common during the hurricane. For our clients with cloud solutions, while internet was down at home and the office, many flocked to Starbucks and other places with free Wifi in order to get urgent emails out. Our firms with cloud based email solutions were able to stay in touch with clients and even bill while other firms with an email server housed in their office were totally down. These are the issues you avoid with a cloud based system. As server hosting costs go down and the need to keep your firm up and running increases, these cloud solutions will become the norm and Rekall Technologies will help you get there.