So yesterday I got back from ConnectLive 2018. The iManage event for their customers. Held again this year just across for the Millennium Dome…sorry O2 arena. The event consists of two days packed full of sessions that suit the engineer through to the CIO and many roles in between, whether in IT or other functions, within law firms or corporates. The day is geared around iManage’s suite of products as you’d expect. It kicks off with keynotes from the senior team before breaking into four tracks that run through the day, there is also a full vendor hall for partners.

Thankfully unlike last years ConnectLive event on June 27th 2017, this one was relatively uneventful for me 🙂

So what were my personal thoughts on key things to look for?

1. The RAVN indexer. Not the most exciting thing on the face of it. But there are a couple of things that I really liked. First off the architecture, it’s old school iManage, simple, well thought out components (not like IDOL, though shall I publish that blog post on initial thoughts of IDOL now from the early days of the Autonomy merger?). It’s also been designed to scale. But overall seems it will require less hardware and storage than IDOL. Second and more important it will fulfil a promise that I was looking for at the time of the Autonomy/Interwoven merger that never materialised, this being one index to fulfil many solutions, so once you’ve indexed your DMS you can use this index to get all the good stuff from Extract , Insight and the excellent idea that is Classification (using machine learning to auto classify/profile those documents!). No need for an index for this, another one (of the same document set!) for something else.
2. New cloud. Sorry I’m not sure what the actual name for this is, but it’s the new architecture that is designed from the ground up for the cloud. It uses all the latest tech that is used to scale all those platforms that are MUCH bigger than any law firm data set, twitter and the like. Rafiq’s keynote on the tech on the second day was one for the tech geeks, great! Be good to see this platform in the wild.
3. Security Policy Manager. Now this product has been around for a while, but it was a couple of things on the horizon that made me think that this is becoming more than a replacement for “the other product”. First off was the ability to use it to manage policies of other legal products, for example the policies for Workshare Protect, very interesting concept and could be great to reduce admin in stretched IT depts. Second was talk of DLP (data loss prevention) and DRM (digital rights management), imagine one place to manage the rights to client/matter information that then manages where that data can go and if it goes outside the perimeter it can be managed and controlled or blocked! This could be really exciting and the DRM aspect is one I’ve suggested before.

There were a couple of other areas that I need to think on a bit more:

1. Go drive. This is a product I think I can buy into, but think I would want to use it myself for a bit and maybe try it with a few lawyers first. There are a few parts to mention.
   1. First there is the functionality that is essentially like OneDrive is for cloud files on Windows 10 but looking after the documents from your DMS (wherever that is). I can see plenty of use cases for this.
   2. Then there is the tech underneath to manage the file transfer better that allows for improved experience over links with high latency. Again can get this.
   3. Lastly is the ability to display the DMS in file explorer, now this I can sort of see but think I would need to use a bit I think to make a final view.
2. Auto update feature. I get this, it’s the move Microsoft and others are making to ensure we’re all on the latest versions. But with MS we’re using their tooling to manage all of the updates in the new Windows 10 Office and 365 evergreen world, another set of tooling to manage the iManage updates? Will it scale to organisations with thousands of machines to update from Seattle to Brisbane? Need to look some more at this.

Overall another great conference, one that other large legal vendors should do in Europe. In fact it’s a great template for other legal events which for me are aimed more at the manager. ConnectLive is a bit more ILTA that caters for all and ends up being so much better for it!