It’s been a few years since iManage WorkSite effectively won the war of the document management systems (DMS) against Hummingbird’s DM5. Since then both companies have been through a number of mergers and are currently the Legal DMS products are owned by Autonomy and Opentext respectively.
The peace though looks soon to be shattered by a counter strike on two fronts. On the one side we have the SharePoint juggernaut from Microsoft and on the other a coalition of vendors we’ll call “the cloud” (currently led from the front by netdocuments).
So who’s going to win this latest battle? First off it’s worth pointing out that the game has changed considerably since the WorkSite 8.0 v DM5 days, it’s no longer just traditional DMS functionality that is required in the armoury, but email management capabilities and great search functionality.
Let’s start with SharePoint. In its 2010 guise it looks like SharePoint is starting to be taken seriously. From Lewis Silkin’s SharePoint implementation to the announcement that Clifford Chance are going SharePoint there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the product is ready to be used by law firms. The big benefit of course is the cost, if you’re licenced for Microsoft, then you’re likely licensed for SharePoint. Plus there is the native integration with Office 2010. The addition of the FAST search engine gives it some capability against WorkSite’s IDOL engine. And there’s also a growing IT skillset out there to maintain the product (wider than just the Legal IT market).
But wait, there are limitations for Legal. Matter centricity and email management to name two. These can be addressed by “add ons” like Workshare Point or DMS4Legal (the former I have seen and have to say looks really neat) but then the cost and resource benefits are reduced or eliminated.
So if it’s not a one horse SharePoint race, what about the other side, the cloud coalition?
I’ll be honest I like the concept of netdocuments. The desktop application has all the features of a good DMS like WorkSite, but the heavy lifting of a DMS (the application servers, the indexers, the database etc) is managed in the cloud. Allowing the focus for the Legal IT department to be on the fee earners desktop, which is where it should be.
The downside of the cloud at the moment is the perceived security and risk concerns, I’m sure this will be resolved in time. But right now it’s still a stumbling block for many firms, but the shift may be coming (Foley & Lardner in the US, a 1000 lawyer firm, have possibly shown the way).
So is the original winner of the DMS battle doomed?
Short answer, certainly not.
I think there is plenty of life left in iManage WorkSite. As well as the fact that unlike the others it is a proven product in Legal, it also has a couple of aces up it’s sleeve.
First off it’s proven itself to be scalable to meet the demands of even the largest law firms. Something that SharePoint I don’t think has yet proven. The number of documents a law firm has may have levelled, but the email volumes on matters is still growing. That’s a counter strike on one flank.
On the other side it’s announced a big offensive by moving WorkSite to a hosted solution, too early to tell whether this is a route to victory (or what exactly the hosted solution will look like), but on the face of it moving WorkSite into the cloud itself is a good move.
So who’ll be the winner?
I honestly don’t know. Thinking about it, I hope there won’t be one outright winner. A little competition in the Legal DMS arena is a good thing. Product competition usual brings with it innovation and advancement, it forces vendors to up their game. All of which can only be a good thing for the lawyers!! *
*that’s lawyers as users of the technology, not in some big litigation of course!!
I think this is a nicely balanced view. What about SharePoint in the cloud too? I’ve heard that that’s how Clifford Chance will be deploying it.
We (Miller Johnson) are pursuing a SP based DM via Handshake Software’s DMD product. We currently have SharePoint based client/matter centricity, client/matter intake, many practice management sites and extranets. We are actively rolling out a SharePoint based email management solution where will have 4.5m emails in SharePoint. For us, SharePoint will be our Firm wide content management solution and we will continue to drive content into it. Traditional DMS providers may not be driven out of business but clearly they have another competitor on the block that enables Firms to connect disparate content with their own internal resources. Hopefully they will sit up and take notice because innovation has been seriously lacking from them for years and interoperability to the full Firm’s application suite beyond a handful of applications has been abysmal.
What about WorldDocs? That seems to be an option that does not require a separat SQL server.
Yes, what about Worldox? The article does not mention this DMS option that is VERY popular with the mid-size firms. Less cost to install and maintain and competes with all the functions in iManage and DM. I guess the Jason lives in the large law firm market, but is a very small number of law firms when compared to the total market.
WorlDox beats the pants off iManage/Filesite. Matter-centric filing is not necessary for a DMS. In WorlDox you can easily group files by client and matter, and search for them in any number of ways. I’ve used both products extensively, and find WorlDox superior in speed, accuracy, and interface.
I have been wanting to write an article similar to this for a while, and will still try and do so on my blog. I think the big issues with DMS, and iManage in particular, is that iManage does not seem to be looking to innovate further in the DMS space. They seem happy with where they are and are looking at other legal areas (e-discovery, records etc) instead. With search technology and the ability to extract information out of documents improving, I think it is time to re-think what is needed in a DMS. Law firms struggle to balance security, stability, redundancy, extranet access, matter centricity, and I think a huge reason for those struggles is we are trying to squeeze a lot of this in to a design that was not intended to support it. It is going to be an interesting few years, and I do expect to see more firms moving away from iManage. It will be interesting to see the DMS plans for amlaw 100 firms/magic circle firms come 2013 or so.
Product selection is highly firm-size dependent, with small to medium-sized firms being disinterested in the significant investment (in terms of licensing, infrastructure and services) required to implement even the mid-market solutions mentioned above.
We’ve found many lawyers in this segment to be tech early adopters – iPad-toting, and cloud-enabled (many already using DropBox for very primitive file sharing).
They’re certainly open to richer cloud-based DM offerings (who doesn’t want integration with Microsoft Office and Outlook? and features that support matter-centricity and lightweight contracts mgmt?).
Netdocuments, and KnowledgeTree come to mind (though given that I’m, ahem, associated with the latter, do parse this comment appropriately).
Daniel Chalef, CEO, KnowledgeTree
It still comes down to understanding client requirements and budget. Luckily I am in a position where I represent multiple DM solutions including Autonomy WorkSite, SharePoint and Alfresco both on premise and in the cloud and what my clients find helpful is that I focus on what are their requirements and what is their budget before I even start recommending what solution is the best or what solution is winning the race or will win the race in both legal firms and corporate legal. All of the solutions we represent at Micro Strategies can be leveraged in the legal market as evidenced by our clients and as evidenced via actual implementations. Everyday I work with firms who look for recommendations, and most important is that whatever we recommend is not based on “what’s hottest, what’s newest, what’s cheapest, what’s cloud based, what’s on premise, it’s what are you requirements and what is your budget! A product is just part of the solution, not all of it! Experience, Knowledge and Skills along with a product provide a successful solution!