As a trial lawyer who spends as much time out of the office as in, I need secure access to all of my client data on the road. I need to be able to send and receive e-mail, review document drafts, collaborate with clients and counsel, check and update task assignments to my staff, and make court filings from just about anywhere. Oh, and I would like this capability without spending a small fortune on a customized server system or hiring a small army of IT workers. How is this possible? Simple: My firm is in the cloud.
What does "cloud computing" mean? This is an increasingly difficult question to answer, as the power and number of applications for cloud computing continues to increase. In a nutshell, "cloud computing" refers to Internet-based applications or computer infrastructure in which the computing resources and often the storage capacity for the data itself are located away from the user's site and accessed through the Internet. "Cloud" is simply a metaphor for the unseen network systems accessed over the Internet.
The cloud services that attorneys use most are cloud storage solutions and software applications that run over the Web. Many of these services, such as Web-based e-mail, have reached widespread adoption.
Online storage: Think of cloud-based storage as having a C: drive in the sky, accessible from any computer on the Internet. Such services allow secure storage of files on an online drive accessible from any computer as if it was an internal drive on the local machine. Also included in this category are online backup services, which upload and back up data to an offsite storage facility. In most cloud-based systems, a firm's data will reside 1) on servers or drives at the office and 2) in the cloud, thus providing an extra layer of data backup.
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Source: law.com
By: Christopher McKinney
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