This is the first of a three-part blog series about the 2016 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey. This week we will focus on the survey results that relate to cloud. Cloud in this survey covers everything from collaboration, to online document management, to Microsoft 365.
The first metric that really stood out to us about cloud was an increase in the percentage of firms that planned on purchasing cloud storage in the next 12 months. This year 25% of respondents (a nearly 10% increase over last year) planned on purchasing cloud in the next year. This is a rather large increase, as last year there was a one percent decrease in the number of respondents that planned to purchase cloud. There was also an increase of those who had purchased cloud in the last 12 months, up to 34% versus the 2015 result of 33%. That is not a very significant increase, but it does show that cloud implementation is still going strong for many firms. This also means that within the next couple of years, cloud technologies will have a near 100% saturation rate across firms. And even though all law firms will be soon using some aspect of the cloud, it won’t cover all of their technologies.
When asked what percentage of a firm’s software and service offerings could be cloud based within the next 1-3 years 53% of all firms stated that less than 25% of their services or software would be cloud based. 47% expect their software and services to be 25-greater than 75% cloud based. That is a 7% increase over last year, reflecting the uptick in cloud purchasing and an increase in adoption of cloud. Small firms showed the most aggressive adoption of all firm sizes with 61% indicating that more than 50% of their services and software would be cloud based over the next 1-3 years. When asked about exciting technology trends, cloud computing remained in the top 3 list.
Some compelling reasons to embrace cloud were disaster recovery (71% of respondents), flexibility (51% of respondents), and versatility or mobility of cloud solutions (44% of respondents). Similarly to last year, some of the compelling reasons to embrace cloud technology were also compelling reasons to avoid it. Examples of this are security and cost. Though 25% of respondents said security was a compelling reason to embrace cloud usage, 55% responded with security being a reason to avoid cloud. Cost also shared the juxtaposition with 35% of respondents naming cost savings a reason to adopt cloud, but also 43% of respondents named cost and reason to avoid cloud.
Another key insight that we were able to pull from this survey is that one of the major concerns for cloud adoption was a lack of integration options with existing systems (45% of respondents.) Medium and small firms had a higher response rate in terms of integration options being a concern whereas larger firms’ concerns were focused in on security and compliance.
For those of you that struggle with the concern of integration options with existing systems, look no further! SeeUnity’s suite of solutions can eliminate those fears and make a transition or implementation of cloud systems painless. If you would like to know how, contact info@seeunity.com. That rounds up the key figures about cloud from the 2016 ILTA/Inside Legal Technology purchasing survey. Stay tuned next week for Part Two: Security Management.
