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General Legal IT

The HP and Autonomy era is gone! iManage leadership completes buyout.

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Well this morning sees the official announcement that the iManage leadership team has completed a buyout from Hewlett-Packard (HP). I’m not going to post comment yet, I’ll let the dust settle a few days before that. But here are some links to read what’s currently being said:

From the Legal IT Insider : “The Boys Are Back In Town as Team iManage complete management buyout from HP”

From Legal IT Professionals : “iManage Leadership Completes Buyout of Business Unit from HP”

The brand new iManage website press release : “iManage Leadership Announces Buyout from HP”

From Phoenix’s website : “Phoenix congratulates iManage”

Post from Neil Araujo on the iManage site : “Who is iManage Today?” and on LinkedIn Pulse “Who is iManage Today?”

Post from Kraft Kennedy : “iManage Splits from HP, Becomes Independent Company”

From Forrester : “The Rebirth of iManage: A New Company With A Familiar Name Re-enters The ECM Market”

From Ascertus : “iManage buy-out great news for the market”

Nothing from Tikit as yet?

I’ll update this page through the day with new articles, so if you’ve got any comment or posts that’s not just the press release please point them out to me on twitter @planty

 

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General Legal IT

Someone has poked the iManage lion and it’s realised there are a few other predators on the plain

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iManage seems to be back in the game, technically I realise it never went away but over the last month or so they seem to be on a real social media push. I mean I’ve actively been encouraged to blog about some of their new products on the horizon, those who’ve followed this blog for a few years will know just how surprising that actually is!! I’m not complaining at all, this is great news.

So this blog post is just some of my thoughts on the products they’ve had on show over the last month or so at user groups and CIO briefings.

First up the “White Rabbit project”, this has been in development for a while but is starting to near an initial rollout. What is it? Well it’s effectively a new interface for the WorkSite DMS (document management system), not a replacement for FileSite or DeskSite but a brand new web interface using responsive design, built using HTML5. So this should work as well on your PC as it will on your Mac or Android phone.

I have to say it’s pretty impressive. With an intuitive design and “in app help” it should be easy for the lawyer to pick up without too much training. As said it’s not intended to replace exisiting interfaces into WorkSite (although overtime I suspect it will replace WorkSite Web), but there will be a rolling programme to rollout some of its features into some parts of FileSite/DeskSite; the admin dialogues etc This can only be a good thing as the search, profile and security dialogues are looking a bit old fashioned and unintuitive in this day and age. There are some really well thought through amendments to viewing, this is built to facilitate better mobile experience. The document is streamed to you as you read, so on a mobile device that 500 page document won’t kill your 3G connection.

Next up the cloud is back on the agenda, can’t help think this is a response to the emergence or netdocuments and Matter Centre from Microsoft. Though I don’t see this as a transition to SaaS ala Satya Nadella’s moves at Redmond. This is more a “look we know you’ve got all these terrabytes of old archive data now, let us look after them for you” approach. At least that’s the way it seems to me at the moment. Given the success of Mimecast maybe this is a sensible move?

Finally a word on LinkSite. There was a big rush a year or so ago to be in the “dropbox” space by many vendors, unfotunately I don’t think though firms saw this as big enough of an issue to rollout out an enterprise wide solution. My personal view is that it’s such a shame LinkSite its not platform agnostic as their interface into WorkSite is excellent! It’s that “other end”, the HP cloud access, it’s a little too parochial for me, the ideal would be the LinkSite integration with SkyDrive or Box at the other end with the app support they bring across multiple platforms. Still I understand their (iManage) reasoning, because they own the whole experience they can develop something that looks so seemless. The Apple approach!

To wrap up, just a final word or two on cloud. Last month saw netdocuments announce new developments in their encryption, and today (7th July) they announced they received the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 Certification confirming NetDocuments meets or exceeds international standards for data privacy, security, and information governance practices. You’ve also got Microsoft pushing their auto encryption ability in the Office 365 Exchange email platform based on the emails content (ie if it seems personal information such as bank details it will encrpyt the message). Email and Documents are the staple ingredients of law firms and their clients, so inevitably there is still the “on premise, on premise, on premise” mantra (you only have to read the recent LinkedIn online discussion following comments in an article in the latest Legal IT Insider – page 9 comments from Farrer & Co IT director, Neil Davison), but the consumer demands of access from anywhere combined with security offered by SaaS providers surely is pointing to a cloud based future for the core functions. After all, as I said in the LinkedIn post above, “why as IT depts would we want to spent all our efforts keeping operational systems running when we could use our sparse resources on strategic projects to help grow our firms?? We’ve allowed the Iron Mountains of this world to look after our clients data for years in paper form, it’s only a matter of time before we make the shift surely”.

But I love the fact that the DMS (document management system) world is hotting up up again. It’s been a stale environment for a few too many years andso I hope the iManage developers crack on and deliver White Rabbit asap, netdocuments continue to push their product and Microsoft continue to build on Matter Centre in their 365 world. I suspect we may see at least two out of the three 😉

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General Legal IT, Uncategorized

NetDocuments Secures $25 Million to Fuel Growth in the Document Management Market

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So today NetDocuments announce a “strategic partnership with Frontier Capital, securing a $25 million equity investment to accelerate NetDocuments’ increasing growth across the legal market”. Interesting move from both sides, a private equity firm willing to invest heavily in Legal IT and a big investment for NetDocuments to use pushing their product forward. I understand it will be a push on the marketing and sales rather than the technology side. I guess they feel the technology is at a mature state that is ready for a big push.

As the press release says:

“This investment represents Frontier Capital’s confidence in the market and NetDocuments’ ability to accelerate the growth across the legal industry.  The boost in capital will build on a successful sales and marketing strategy that will continue to penetrate NetDocuments’ core market and exploit the robust features of a true SaaS document management service.”

I think it’s actually an exciting time for the bread and butter technology for Legal IT. Here we have NetDocuments looking to move documents into the cloud, we also have Microsoft looking to moving email and lync into the cloud with their Office365 offerings and Mimecast wanting to look after law firms vast email archives in the cloud. These are systems that don’t offer strategic value as they’re common to all firms, but they are absolutely critical services. These SaaS solutions could turn them into utility services allowing hard pressed Legal IT depts. to focus on that game changing disruptive technology that we’ve talked about.

But there is just that pesky word “risk” that comes into play. We’re edging closer but unlike the corporate world we’re not taking the plunge just yet. True, we are custodians of client data and not just users of our own data. But as law firms clients move their own data into the cloud surely the demands from clients for data control will change?

So, if you were a betting man would you bet law firms will take the plunge to an Office365 or NetDocuments? A top 10 firm in less than 2 years? 5 years? Why not take a vote on the poll on the right hand site of this page (won’t be available if you’re on the mobile site).

I put £10 in Bet Victor for the World Cup and had a few 50p’s on various matches. My balance after the final stood at £1.68, clearly I am not a betting man! But I do have a feeling that in the DMS world we could we be in for a bit of a replay of the early 2000’s DMS battles (word of caution before you all log onto Bet365, we all thought this of SharePoint a few years back!). We could do with a bit of competition, the last battle drove some real innovation in the DMS world that led to a shift from profiling to a much more user friendly matter centric DMS with DM5 & Worksite 8.

As Alvin Tedjamulia, CTO, NetDocuments said in the press release:

“We’ve seen the document management industry go through dramatic changes over the last decade and a half, and we’ve been fortunate to be at the forefront with technology that is truly challenging the status quo.”

With some developments HP iManage Worksite have on their roadmap we could be seeing the start of an innovation acceleration in DMS, picking up from my last post, maybe one that will shift us to the “third platform” in this core Legal IT technology.

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General Legal IT

SharePoint – bogged down and out of the battle?

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Back in February 2011 I wrote a post titled “Is iManage WorkSite about to be outflanked?” where I looked at two up and coming DMS (Document Management System) technologies that were looking to take iManage WorkSite’s crown as the legal DMS of choice for mid to large law firms. After 18 months I though it would be worth taking a look to see how one of those “manoeuvres” is progressing.

The SharePoint offensive.

Leading the front is Magic Circle giant Clifford Chance, their drive started back in 2010 (at least that’s when I first heard of their plans to replace legacy DM5 systems with SharePoint at ILTA 2010 in Las Vegas). A post on Legal IT Professionals this month nicely brings us up to date on how it’s going and below are some of my comments on the progress.

My first concern for any big law firm thinking of SharePoint is the length of time taken to reach the objective. The project is getting on for two years old and so far only half the firm is live (3000 staff), as an example we have recently put nearly 1000 staff onto WorkSite in a project taking a little over 6 months (the main logistics of the rollout being the last 7 weeks of the 6 months where we also replaced the desktop estate too). Yes you could argue that any new technology brings delays, but you have to weigh those up against the benefits you’re going to get. One of the main benefits touted for SharePoint is the cost savings!

The biggest concern though for me, and I think should be for any firm, is the lack of email management. Managing the volumes of email today is much more critical to firms than just the documents of the firm. Keeping an up to date electronic file with todays mobile lawyers is an essential part of any DMS. Clifford Chance say “We are still deciding how best to present email content in SharePoint”, this is two years in! As Joanna puts it in the article “So basically you don’t have and will not have for the foreseeable future one folder or site-collection with all your matter related data including knowledge, email and related documents”.

Now an interesting point is raised here, “it is not totally clear to me that a single folder for everything is going to be what people actually want” says Clifford Chance. And I agree from a technical perspective, but from a lawyers point of view I think the feel of one place for all the matter material is essential. In fact I’m starting to think that maybe the DMS isn’t the right place for email, but that is for another day/post. Regardless you still want the UI (user interface) to present you a matter folder so from a user perspective you feel all your file is together.

On current progress in legal, SharePoint doesn’t look to me to be a threat to iManage anytime soon with these two issues. However there could be one secret weapon up Microsoft’s sleeve that may turn the tide.

Office 15.

As Clifford Chance point out “firms would gravitate towards SharePoint because it integrates with everything on the desktop” and this is the key point. The user experience is becoming key, the consumer UI that Apple brought us with the iPhone and iPad and now Micorsoft are bringing with Windows 8 mean people are demanding easy to use applications. The integration of Office 15 and SharePoint could be key, as Clifford Chance say “most people like the way SharePoint looks and the way it works. It is very similar to using a Microsoft desktop at home, and it is a lot easier than learning to use a piece of additional software that keeps popping up and getting in your way all the time!”.

On this current attack though I don’t think that iManage needs to worry about being outflanked. If costs are to be believed (“said that they invested over £1 million in consultancy”) then there are few firms that can afford the cost or the luxury of a two year project. But there is the question over iManage now it’s part of HP and how it will adapt in the next few years? The battlefield is about the change considerably with Windows 8, cloud and mobile computing and it’s going to take an entirely different set of equipment to cope!

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