A case in point is Pro Bono Net, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to justice through innovative uses of technology and increased volunteer lawyer participation. The organization meets this mission, among other ways, through its Pro Bono Manager™ service, which boosts a law firm’s pro bono program management capacity. Operating as a secure, seamless extension of a law firm’s intranet, Pro Bono Manager integrates content from the public-interest legal community with reporting, knowledge management, and lawyer-and-case matching tools that draw on a firm’s own human resources and time keeping systems.
Pro Bono Manager is a web-based, or software-as-a-service, solution—and the low-cost and minimal management required by the law firms that adopt it has been one of its selling points. But the cloud that hosted the service was a very physical set of servers owned and managed by Pro Bono Net. When those servers reached end-of-life, Pro Bono Net faced the same choice that their customers had answered by choosing Pro Bono Manager: Should Pro Bono Net refresh its hardware installation, or migrate Pro Bono Manager to a cloud platform?
The organization had to consider the economics of its choices, as any enterprise would. But, as a service provider to others, it had additional considerations: Would a move to the cloud affect the prices, availability, reliability, and speed that Pro Bono Net offered its customers and, if so, how?
One reason: Windows Azure was built from the ground up to support the same Microsoft technologies—Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (in the cloud: Windows Azure SQL Reporting), and the Microsoft .NET Framework—that Pro Bono Net already used. Another reason: Microsoft offered Windows Azure Virtual Machines, which provided the flexibility and availability that comes from the use of virtualization technology.
Pro Bono Net used Windows Azure Virtual Machines for persistent virtualization in support of SharePoint Server, which serves as the foundation for Pro Bono Manager. If the organization had been moving between more consistent platforms—say, two virtual platforms, one managed on-premises and one in the cloud—it would have been easier to estimate cost. Going from a physical/on-premises platform to a virtual/cloud platform required some experimentation in preproduction environments, which the organization and Microsoft completed successfully.
Pro Bono Net eventually decided on a high-availability infrastructure that replicated domain controllers, front ends, application servers, and Windows Azure SQL Database instances on virtual machines. It also adopted Windows Azure availability sets to further mitigate risk and promote reliability. And as its use of Windows Azure grows, the organization expects to adopt geo-colocation features that will further increase fault tolerance and business continuity.
For its specific configuration on Windows Azure, Pro Bono Net spends $11,000 annually—and saves 79 percent over comparable cost for an on-premises infrastructure and support, after a 1.4-year payback period.
Pro Bono Net now pays less to support Pro Bono Manager while gaining more, particularly more reliability. Since the move to Windows
Azure, uptime for the application has increased from 99 percent to 99.9 percent. “That’s a significant increase for us,” says Alec Rosin, Consulting Engineer for Pro Bono Net. “On-premises, if we had a disaster, we could be out for a week. We don’t anticipate that happening on Windows Azure.”
Pages and reports now load about 20 percent faster on Windows Azure, creating a more natural user experience.
To support clients, employees frequently traveled to hospitals, clients’ homes, and courtrooms to advise clients, gather statements from witnesses, and argue cases. Mark Nikel, Founder and Lead Attorney at Mark Nikel Professional Corporation, says, “The largest challenge for us was remote access and sharing of information. As a lawyer in a small law firm like mine, being able to be out with clients and being able to work away from the office is survival.” The firm’s email and case management solutions were not providing the remote access capabilities that employees needed to stay productive when they were away from the office.
For messaging, the firm used a POP3 email and calendar service that cost CDN$50 (U.S.$50) per month and presented several challenges. Employees found it difficult to synchronize email and calendar information with mobile phones. The POP3 service also had limited functionality for updating calendars and tasks. Because the courts set deadlines for when attorneys can file lawsuits or make motions, calendars changed frequently, and legal professionals had to track updates manually. Additionally, the amount of spam that employees received each day was unmanageable.
To store client and case information, the law firm used Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition, a third-party legal case management software solution. The software was installed on the law firm’s server and client information was backed up to an external hard drive. Since legal professionals must access legal case information from remote locations like the courthouse, the firm set up a virtual private network (VPN) with a dedicated IP address, but remote performance was slow and unstable. Amicus Attorney worked great when employees accessed it from the office, but poor remote access was affecting productivity and employees’ ability to provide information to clients in a timely manner. The firm expected to spend CDN$1,000 (U.S.$1,000) to upgrade to Amicus Attorney Premium Edition and Amicus Mobile for remote access to case information. In addition to problems with remote access, the firm was also concerned about the security of data, stability of backups, and downtime.
Nikel explains, “I was the IT person, so if something did not work, I had to fix it or pay an IT consultant.” If he was at the courthouse or working from home and the server went down, which happened three or four times a year, he would have to go into the office to restart it, taking time away from important legal business.
As current users of the latest Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, Nikel and his associates were able to seamlessly connect to the communication and collaboration services of Office 365 to provide exceptional legal advice. Nikel says, “The Office applications like Outlook and Word work great with the online services like Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.” By using Office 2010 and Office 365, the firm began to fully benefit from the combined capabilities of the rich client desktop suite and the hosted services of Office 365.
By replacing the POP3 service with Exchange Online, employees can access email, calendars, and contacts from almost anywhere with a mobile phone or a computer with a broadband connection. Nikel says, “With each device—my tablet, a Windows Phone 7, an Android phone, and even my iPad at home—the synchronization works.” Attorneys use tasks and calendars in Microsoft Outlook 2010 to manage schedules of cases and deadlines. The firm also receives less spam and believes the up-to-date antivirus and antispam solutions make email more secure.
With SharePoint Online, the legal professionals can easily access files and case information remotely without logging onto VPN. The firm also decided to switch from Amicus Attorney to Credenza, made by Credenza Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Credenza is an Outlook add-in that captures client and case information and works with SharePoint Online to provide a legal case management solution that attorneys can access from anywhere. The firm can synchronize SharePoint libraries with Outlook 2010 so attorneys can access case-related documents even when working offline. The firm also uses SharePoint Online to host its external website because it’s simple and easy to set up for a small business.
The firm uses the Microsoft OneNote 2010 note-taking program to capture information into an electronic notebook that attorneys can save in SharePoint Online to share with paralegals. With OneNote 2010, author indicators capture who wrote what. Legal professionals frequently research previous cases, and they can copy relevant information into the notebook with a web link to the case. In Outlook 2010, Nikel can send an e-mail message to a OneNote notebook for a specific client. Nikel says, “With OneNote and SharePoint Online, I was able to create shared notebooks to capture research, links to prior cases, maps of accident scenes, medical records, photographs, and contact information related to a case. I can access this information from almost anywhere from my mobile phone with Microsoft OneNote Mobile or with Microsoft OneNote Web App.”
Nikel himself has redirected time from IT issues to serving clients. “With Office 365, my [IT] role is almost nonexistent. Once it’s set up, it’s working. I need not worry about it and the time is mine to devote to the law practice.” Also with reduced spam and reduced downtime, Nikel can devote more time to client activities.
Nikel says, “On a per-lawyer basis, my IT costs will be a fraction of what any of the other law firms’ IT costs are. We pay less than $100 per month per lawyer compared to thousands of dollars per lawyer at a large firm.”
Nikel says, “I used to be a partner at a large firm, where we had IT staff and large budgets. There was no way a small law firm could afford these advanced capabilities like access-from-anywhere. But with Office 365 it makes it possible for a small firm like mine to have these same capabilities without a large IT investment.”
Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.
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“We encourage our attorneys to use the technology tools that make them most efficient,” says Alexandra Buck, Chief Operating Officer and Special Counsel at Bartlit Beck. “We pioneered the use of trial presentation software, and we continually test new technologies that help us present our arguments as clearly and persuasively as possible.”
Most of the firm’s 77 attorneys used thin and light laptops but still found them too heavy and clunky for their on-the-go lifestyles. They took too long to turn on and shut down, which attorneys did multiple times a day as they moved between offices, meetings, homes, airports, airplanes, and customer sites.
“I would take my laptop into a meeting, fire it up, go get coffee, have a hallway chat, come back, and it would still be loading,” Buck says. “That wasted time adds up throughout the day.”
Brian Prestes, a partner at Bartlit Beck, shared Buck’s frustrations. “I really wanted a tablet to make it easier to do all my reading, but I didn’t want to juggle multiple devices. From a lifestyle standpoint, I wanted a device that I could pick up and put down frequently to check email, play music, read a brief, and chat with my family via Skype, all more fluidly than I could with a laptop. I also travel constantly, and I found it increasingly difficult to have enough space on an airplane to open a laptop.”
With their Surface Pro 3 devices, lawyers have immediate access to all pretrial discovery materials, deposition testimony, legal analysis, and everything else related to the case, which can be sorted and analyzed instantaneously. “This gives us a tremendous advantage over firms that may have access to similar information but that require layers of support to access, manipulate, and present it in court,” Buck says.
Using a combination of touch, the Surface Pen, and Type Cover, lawyers can quickly move around within a document, highlight or underline language, or otherwise manipulate presentations with total ease. “With the Surface Pro 3, our attorneys can more flexibly control their stories in the courtroom, which gives more authenticity and credibility to our presentations,” Buck says.
Prestes loves the “lapability” of the Surface Pro 3—the ability to use it comfortably on his lap, on an airplane tray, or in other tight quarters. “After using my Surface Pro 3, I can say that it has delivered on the promise of being the tablet that can replace my laptop,” he says. “I can set up shop and be productive anywhere, in small slivers of time. If I only have five minutes, I can check my email and respond to questions, whereas before I lost that time.”
With its practice of results-based billing, Bartlit Beck prizes efficiency—thus its penchant for technology. “Our bread and butter is being efficient,” says Buck. “The Surface helps us do the best possible work in the least amount of time.”
Bartlit Beck uses Microsoft Office 365 to give employees access to cloud-based email, instant messaging, videoconferencing, productivity applications, and more. Prestes and others say that the combination of the Surface Pro 3 and Office 365 is a powerful productivity enhancer. “I now have all my Microsoft OneNote notebooks stored on OneDrive for Business, and I can access them from anywhere using my Surface Pro or my phone,” Prestes says. “It’s really pretty amazing to have my entire office at my fingertips wherever I am.”
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From my time writing about the K-12 IT environment I've realized that deploying classroom technology is about three main points:
From software to hardware there are new ed tech tools becoming available almost everyday and it's critical that school IT leaders keep up with what's available and potentially valuable for their schools.
Recently Microsoft released its next big operating system in Windows 10 and it’s a huge overhaul from Windows 8. The start button is back for starters, which is a clear indication that Microsoft is finally taking user feedback into consideration.
The biggest thing to note however is how some of the new Windows 10 features are perfectly suited for education, empowering both teachers and students to become better organized, more interactive and just flat out more productive.
To give you a better idea how Windows 10 can help position your school to take on new developments in digital learning, we’ve listed 4 reasons why Windows 10 is the right classroom technology for your school.
Educators can also take advantage of the new Web Note feature that will allow them to scribble notes directly on the web page using a stylus or fingers. The pages can be shared easily with the class for more efficient presentations.
“Obviously this works best on a touchscreen Windows device like a Surface, but it works with a mouse too, and will be perfect for interactive whiteboards,” writes educator Jonathan Wylie.
Edge manages your reading list as well, so when using the app on a small tablet it becomes your eBook reader.
There are enormous learning possibilities with AR. For one , students can model designs before construction. They can also take trips to virtually anywhere in the world and it would be like they’re right there.
AR combines the physical with the digital world and this in itself makes Windows 10 an invaluable tool that can inspire your students and teachers.
Cortana will also make sure that students keep up with their daily tasks.
“Beyond reminding you of appointments, due dates, and traffic concerns Cortana really supports the execution of required academic tasks in the day. This is essential for students who need support in their executive functioning,” writes Martha Jez, the director of professional development programs at Fair Chance Learning.
Cortana is in the early stages of development, which means we will see more personalized learning opportunities for students in the future. Reports did mention that WindowsPhone integration is already available and Android and IOS compatibility will come soon.
Hello uses a 3D camera to authenticate users through facial recognition, shaving off a huge chunk of logging time.
However, you need RealSense 3D cameras installed for this special feature and at the moment the cameras are only available in a few configurations, including the HP Sprout.
In any case, you can opt to use a fingerprint scanner for log-ins without using a password.
This may be a “nice to have” feature right now but with how new technologies are popping up here and there, it wouldn’t surprise me if manually keying in passwords will be obsolete in the near future.
On Friday, September 23, 2016 Microsoft and the Small Business Administration hosted a workshop, Resources for Veteran Entrepreneurs to Start and Expand Business. Jamie Gasior, Business Development Director, Arizona provided additional resources and tech tips at the educational event for veteran business owners, startups and entrepreneurs.
Chat with an expert about your business’s technology needs.
