So, you have an intranet and it…works. A few people are using it – you think. Documents are sporadically posted, the search repository is incomplete, workflows are half-built and the design mirrors that of a Word document. Every time employees …
In efforts to make Office 365 the “most trusted cloud service for productivity,” Microsoft is constantly rolling out new features and updates. Thus, removing potential roadblocks, making the platform more simple and powerful than ever. Recently, they have announced not …
It’s our favorite time of the year again. ILTACON2016 is here, which means reconnecting with old friends, as well as making many more at this year’s conference. For those of you unfamiliar with ILTACON, the International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) annual …
We may be nerds, but we have a sense of humor. We came across these reference books, laughed a little, and thought you would enjoy them too. Happy 4th!
Day Two of SharePoint | Office 365 Symposium and Day One of LegalSEC Summit – both are going great. With the inclusion of Office 365 this year and hybrid advancements to SharePoint, attendee engagement and enthusiasm is apparent. Each new …
I have the pleasure of attending, participating and exhibiting at the SharePoint Symposium again this year in Baltimore. If you’re part of the ILTA community, you’re already aware that Office 365 has been added to this annual event making the …
Being a small IT consulting firm, culture is one of the most important components of our healthy business. While some teammates reside in West Palm Beach, Orlando, Gainesville and Chapel Hill, the majority of us work together in Charlotte. The …
But then you read about SharePoint’s future. On May 4th, Microsoft hosted the “Future of SharePoint” event in San Francisco, delivering a long-term vision for the (now) cloud-first, mobile-first collaboration tool and energizing the SharePoint community with a restored assurance …
Read the latest Adestra report, it is clear that “millennials” prefer modern, instant, and accessible forms of communication like email and the products that support them in the cloud. The report states that more than 80 percent of 14 to …
The next time you ask Siri to “Call Mom,” the elevation of Mount Kilimanjaro, or if she loves you back, put this face to the iconic iPhone voice: Just as I was able to yesterday at Charlotte’s Digital Summit, meet …
Have an IT project you’re leading? Are you building a custom application? SharePoint portal? No matter the project, it is critical to lay the foundation on the front end to ensure success by your due date, which you CAN meet. …
In April and May, we’re hosting our SharePoint Solution Webinar Series. We’re covering topics around SharePoint health, successful project planning and managed services. If you were unable to attend, below is our first webinar of our SharePoint Solution Series:
The Wall Street Journal recently reported two Am Law 100 firms, Cravath and Weil Gotshal, were victims of a data breach last summer. These two prestigious firms serve clients from Wall Street banks to Fortune 500 companies, and contain hyper-sensitive data such …
With cloud adoption and digitalization rapidly becoming the norm for businesses interested in keeping their “OPEN” signs up, it was little surprise this year’s IT predictions focused heavily on security, evolving vendor/provider/C-level roles and innovations that further equip organizations with new tools …
To date, this blog has delivered professional posts to help educate and inform my peers and clients. It’s rare that my personal life visibly crosses paths with my professional life, yet it’s no secret that as a business owner, both …
In a recent article by Redmond Magazine, titled The SharePoint Future Isn’t Cloudy, It’s Hybrid, a negative perspective on SharePoint branding caught my attention. Here it reads: The Branding Problem Klindt said that SharePoint’s native interface can be kind of …
I am proud to reveal one of Acrowire’s newest developments and AmLaw 100 inspired platforms, the NetDocuments API Accelerator. This API Accelerator mimics an on-premises integration experience enhancing both speed and simplicity for on-prem integrations with NetDocuments. Code complexity that …
Microsoft recently announced its plans to make Matter Center more broadly available through GitHub later this year. With Matter Center building momentum among firms after its recent pilot program, this announcement is bound to turns heads. So what does it …
Today, we announced our partnership with Neudesic, creator of The Firm Directory, a profile-based expertise location system powered by Pulse, the company’s enterprise collaboration platform. Together, we can provide best-in-class SharePoint solutions with the legal industry’s leading expertise location software. …
Earlier last week, I had the honor and pleasure of speaking with Guy Wiggins (Kelley Drye & Warren) and Kara Portwood (Armstrong Teasdale) at ILTA SharePoint Symposium. Our session was titled: All You Need to Know to Take SharePoint to …
Today, we announce our partnership with BA Insight to deliver joint technology solutions to the legal market. BA Insight is a software provider that accelerates and future-proofs the creation of SharePoint portals and delivers content connectivity/classification software and user experience …
As firms are raising the bar to seek a competitive edge, leveraging business intelligence and analytics is increasingly becoming a necessity. For those firms already using business intelligence, many are struggling with the decentralized sources in which data is acquired. …
A few weeks ago, I blogged about Microsoft’s dedicated focus on security and the notable Customer Lockbox feature that was announced among many others. Microsoft has continued with this security momentum at the Microsoft Ignite Conference that occurred in Chicago …
Good news, legal. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced additional security features for Office 365 at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. With cloud adoption taking flight as a whole, Microsoft is focused on enhancing security controls and improving transparency in …
In a recent interview, CIO of Brown Rudnick, Jim Darsigny, discussed the growing adoption of cloud storage and overall technological advancements within the legal industry. Brown Rudnick, an international law firm with 230+ lawyers is no exception to the ubiquitous …
Security in the cloud continues to be a top concern among law firms and organizations. Today, 90% of organizations (across industries) still have concerns when considering public cloud adoption. This number is HUGE and an indicator that awareness around cloud security is …
SharePoint Online versus On-premise – How many times have you asked yourself if your firm should be investing in servers, licenses and people to set up a fully controllable SharePoint infrastructure in-house? Or, maybe the low costs and scalability of …
If you’re in the market for migrating data from one platform to another, you’re likely finding that there is a host of tools available ranging at various price points. Depending on the features available, SharePoint migration platforms can be as …
Work hard, play hard. Or in our case, work really hard, aim straight. Last week, my team and I took a break from all things SharePoint, .NET, Six Sigma, etc., to focus our energies elsewhere – the shooting range. We …
The cloud, that is. In Ron Friedmann’s live blog post during LTNY 2015 bloggers breakfast, he captures the following conversation between legal IT gurus, Bob Ambrogi (Blogger and Former Editor), James Paterson (Lexis Nexis), Ari Kaplan (Legal Market Researcher and …
Dice recently launched a new advertising campaign which is beginning to pick up momentum as it spreads from Silicon Valley and San Francisco to other major cities including New York, Seattle and Austin. Whether you find these almost-nude techies offensive or …
Earlier this year, we delivered our first ILTA Roadshow here in our own Queen City (Charlotte, North Carolina). I spoke about new and improved functionality of SharePoint 2013, and what aspects were most relevant to legal. We began this initiative with …
According to an article that was released yesterday from Redmond Magazine, some SharePoint Online features have been eliminated. This includes notes and tags that were deprecated last month and the tasks menu option that was removed from the SharePoint Online …
Philadelphia, New York and Boston are three additional cities my Communications Manager, Luke Seifert, and I traveled to last week for the 2014 ILTA Roadshows. We’re visiting 19 cities this year to present improved functionality of SharePoint 2013 and specifically …
This past Saturday was the annual SharePoint Saturday hosted by the Charlotte Area SharePoint User Group. It’s a free, one-day event run by volunteers and sponsors to provide SharePoint professionals with a continuing education, new training and networking opportunities. This …
King & Spalding hosted Acrowire’s ILTA 2014 Roadshow about SharePoint 2013: What’s New for Legal? The event was held on September 9th in mid-town Atlanta and lunch was catered by Flik Catering Service; I continue to hear the rave reviews about …
Power BI is a collection of features and services to help you display content like Excel workbooks, charts and reports through a different UI, if you wish, but also gives you some other options such as (but not limited to), …
Gartner positioned Microsoft as a top leader for unified communications (UC) measured by both completeness of vision and ability to execute, as shown below in the Magic Quadrant; Cisco, Mitel and Avaya trail close behind. UC is defined by improving …
In some cases, you may need to extract some data from the article/blog list in SharePoint Online. In this tutorial, I will outline steps an admin user can take if they needed to see all of the users which liked …
After returning from the ILTA SharePoint Symposium and taking the time reflect back on key themes and messages, one particular message continues to stand out to me that should be addressed – SharePoint in the Cloud. For those of you …
On April 15th, I addressed the public release of Google Glass and emphasized the benefits of using this hands-free device (here). That is, if you’re able to find a necessary use case for this expensive gadget, you’ll likely experience a major …
Plan to attend the 2014 ILTA SharePoint Symposium? The two-day event will feature presentations on application development, business intelligence, document management and more. June 10th and 11th / Chicago / Westin, Lombard Stop by our table (#19) during the conference to say …
After reading Jeffrey Brandt’s comments in the PinHawk LTD newsletter last week regarding the shortfalls of SharePoint’s document management capabilities emphasized in Law Technology News, I wanted to offer another perspective. Not because his comments were inaccurate, but because they …
With the release of Google Glass open to the public today, this marks a huge milestone for us tech-obsessed consumers and business owners. This hands-free device isn’t just a novelty for consumers; rather, it can be essential to businesses if …
A new study by Robert Half breaks down which IT jobs are expected to rake in the most dough in 2014. Application development (titles including, applications architect, manager or developer) ranks near the top of the list with salaries ranging from …
Yesterday, the ABA Journal reported that a law firm right in our own backyard of Charlotte, North Carolina, was a target of a CryptoLocker attack. This attack, infamously known for targeting computers running Microsoft Windows, using a disguised email attachment …
SharePoint’s latest release, SharePoint 2013, just got more attractive. It is chock full of new functionality with a simplified user experience. This new version is more than just cosmetic enhancements, but an entire face lift. SharePoint’s relevance in the legal …
A company’s brand is the genetic makeup of its people, promise, product and expectations. It’s the visual and emotional identifier for customers, clients and prospects to make associations and draw conclusions about your company in a split second. When you …
According to Computer World’s 2014 forecast survey, demand for programmers and developers remains stable at being the number one sought after IT skill. Fifty-four percent (54%) of companies state that they will make no changes to their IT employee head …
Investing in dual monitors is gaining significant momentum across various industries, but specifically in legal. As attorneys are continually pressed to eliminate inefficiencies, become more productive and even go paperless, it’s no surprise the numbers are on the rise. According …
If you’re anything like me, you’re always on the lookout for new ways to save time throughout your work day, without having to sacrifice a coffee run or more importantly, the quality of your work. With a limited amount of …
Cost cuts. I am sure those two words have been ringing in your ears for some time. As most firms still remain unsettled by national and global economic forces, this previous year, they rushed into quick cost cutting initiatives such …
Have you ever heard the phrase, “seeing is believing”? Well, when it comes to a courtroom, that phrase is law. From the day a client walks through your door and asks for help, your primary focus is to demonstrate the strength …
Yesterday morning, ILTA kicked off for 2013 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Despite having to leave my one-year-old son back in North Carolina, waiting an hour in baggage claim and even longer in hotel check-in, I’m pleased to say …
Yesterday morning, I came across a great article in Law Technology News titled, “Seeing with New Eyes.” After reading the title, I was immediately interested in what the author had to say. He started with a quote by Marcel Proust: …
Most people get a sizable number of newsletters or other mass mailed email messages every day; I’m not referring to spam, here. The type of messages I’m referring to are newsletters or emails from sites like LinkedIn, trade associations, etc. …
It’s been a year since the acquisition of Yammer by Microsoft and there’s still a lot to be questioned and excited about. Since the acquisition, usage of Yammer has increased by 55% totaling 8MM users. With the powerful force of …
According to Complete Discovery Source, e-discovery (electronic discovery) is known as an “electronic aspect of identifying, collecting and producing electronically stored information (ESI) in response to a request for production in a law suit or investigation. ESI includes, but is …
As laptops and iPads have earned a seat at the table in the courtroom, providing attorneys with a more modern, efficient and productive way of practicing law, VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) may be something else to consider. VDI allows your …
The impact of mobile technology and cloud-based computing is everywhere. From the way we interact with colleagues and friends to how we manage our daily life, the norms are changing. This impact and shift of thinking is especially prevalent in …
It wasn’t too long ago, that a foreclosure law practice expressed frustration to us regarding the manual bottlenecks and lack of transparency when it came time to issue a check to the clerk of court. We listened to the end-to-end …
Two words: Collaborative Editing. Do you have heartburn yet? How many documents have come across your desk for editing and raised a pain point, over and over again? Did Outlook prevent the document from successfully reaching your inbox due to size? …
When facing a tough decision, I grab my tablet and put together a pro/con list. No matter how you make a decision, it is up to you to weigh the pros and cons. What type of time investment will we …
Earlier, I talked about the differences in email protocol, here. I walked through the pros and cons of POP3, IMAP and ActiveSync with Microsoft Exchange. You may be scratching your head wondering what the best fit is for your company. …
Six Sigma is often associated with large manufacturing companies, driving down defect and error rates to increase productivity and deliver process improvements. Not anymore. In a world of increasing costs and demand for higher quality goods and services, companies of …
Even if it’s not broke, it may be time to fix it. Today I would like to discuss the old saying, “If it’s not broke, don’t try to fix it.” Do you live by this motto? While this saying may …
As a business owner, you don’t have time to understand the ins and outs of email protocol – you barely have time to read your email. However, you should at least know the basics when making this decision for your …
Do you remember playing the game “Telephone” as a child? A group of people form a circle and the leader chooses what message is going to be dispersed. The leader then secretly tells the message to the person sitting beside …
Several years ago I ran across an article on leadership by the same title as this blog post. I thought the content of the article was relevant enough to copy into a Word document and save for future reference. While the rules are very basic, their simplicity is a large part of their value. We […]
Managing large lists in SharePoint Online is not dissimilar to doing the same for an on-premise SharePoint environment; the difference being that Microsoft has set in stone some settings that can be modified when you have access to the SharePoint Administration Site and the SharePoint servers in your farm. While SharePoint 2010 introduced the ability […]
It is sometimes difficult to justify coming up for air and taking the time to evaluate products that are still very much in motion. In the case of SharePoint 2013, however, it wasn’t hard at all. Acrowire has recognized the …
Until recently, VDI was a technology reserved for enterprise level customers with deep pockets and an equally deep roster of expert IT staff to support it. The expense and complexity of VDI implementations has historically kept SMBs from even considering …
There is no shortage of documentation on the process of upgrading BPOS to Office 365. The problem is most of it is verbose and hard to follow. Some clients prefer to take care of the on premise work themselves during …
Today Bruce Marshall from Microsoft and I teamed up to present to the North Carolina Chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) on technology readiness and Microsoft Office 365. SCORE provides mentoring and other resources to aspiring entrepreneurs. …
There has been a tremendous amount of press in recent weeks regarding PIPA and SOPA and how detrimental these pieces of legislation would be to the online liberties we currently enjoy. I could not agree more with this assessment but …
There has been quite a bit of press coverage regarding the outage at Amazon this week. Much of this coverage has focused on how the outage has brought down many popular web sites such as Reddit, Quora and Foursquare. The …
At a recent Charlotte Regional Technology Executives Council meeting, Fred Sexton from MouseKick.com made an interesting presentation outlining six things that Google does not want you to know. I thought the information was insightful and worth passing along. With Fred’s permission, I wanted to …
Until recently, users of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) had to open a support ticket to enable server side email forwarding. However, Microsoft released a set of PowerShell scripts in February 2011 which allows administrators who are comfortable with …
In this final installment on the Stakeholder Perspective on Technical Debt, we talk through how organizations will benefit from having technology teams engaged in managing issues affecting intrinsic and extrinsic quality. An expanded definitional framework of technical debt will be proposed along …
This is the second article in a series about a recent paper our team submitted to the SEI arguing that technical debt should be defined from what we called “The Stakeholder Perspective.” As we discussed in the introduction, there are many different perspectives …
I recently led a team of technology and risk management professionals in developing a paper for the Second Workshop on Managing Technical Debt. The call for papers is organized by Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI)in preparation for the Workshop which …
Corporate governance programs have taken on a much more significant focus since the latest wave of high profile corporate failures. Companies with tremendous history and prestige like Bear Stearns, AIG, and Lehman Brothers collapsed practically overnight because the desire for …
In the first three parts of this series we discussed topics related to defining, identifying, and quantifying technical debt. In this article we will discuss topics for consideration when planning a remediation initiative. The first thing to recognize before planning a payback strategy is …
There are two key components to the technical debt equation: principal and interest. Quantifying both the principal owed and the interest payments being made are critical. Without a complete picture of the cost of the debt, calculating the return on …
We discussed the process of defining technical debt in a previous article which outlines some important items that should be considered before going about identifying it within an organization. Only after a clear vision of what technical debt means to the organization …
Technical debt is a subject that is getting a lot of attention lately. Gartner estimates global technical debt at $500 Billion and projects it to reach $1 Trillion in five years. Surprisingly, however, technical debt is a concept that many people in …
As you might be aware, Facebook launched a new email platform this week. Businesses are leveraging Facebook more and more these days so the first question to come to my mind was around what the implications for business might be. …
The battle for cloud based email and productivity between Microsoft and Google has really heated up recently. In October, Microsoft announced the next iteration of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) which is being rebranded as Office 365. This will …
