DAC Beachcroft is moving to the iManage Cloud in its South American offices, we can reveal, in a staggered approach that will also see the UK Top 20 law firm deploy iManage Work in the cloud as new offices open, as the firm executes on its cloud-first strategy put in place by IT director David Aird two years ago.
While a wholesale review of DAC’s document management arrangements is not on the cards yet, Aird told us: “This is a kind of a staged approach: we need to provide parity of service across the globe and the easiest way to do that is through the iManage cloud. Then we will look at the best solution across the board. It’s not like next week we’re going to move off prem but it’s not not on the agenda. It’s not something we’re looking at at the moment, but it will come into view because we’re moving a lot of our services to the cloud as we speak.”
DAC is moving all of its development and test servers into Azure and is looking at its production servers next. The 2,300-lawyer firm has a big IT team that is doing much of the work itself, but it initially turned to Hitachi Consulting to create a base infrastructure.
Aird says: “We continue to expand our presence in South America and it has become more important that they are able to work globally and as one firm on a level playing field. If they were on premises, we would have to put in an individual infrastructure and that’s difficult to manage remotely – cloud is more secure, easier to manage and improves the speed of work.”
Aird and his team didn’t consider using other DMS providers and he says: “We trust iManage and are happy with their service. We have already done tests and trials of iManage Cloud and we’re happy that users can connect adequately and that the speed is ok.”
DAC will be rolling out iManage Cloud to offices including Chile, Colombia and Mexico. iManage partner Phoenix Business Solutions is assisting with the move.
This story first appeared in the Orange Rag out yesterday (25 April) – for your free monthly copy click here: http://legaltechnology.com//latest-newsletter/